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.

This is such nonsense. Your child remains your child, however they identify.

Here's my story.

My child approached me, early teens, at night, looking very fearful and worried, saying they had something to tell me. A thousand awful scenarios went through my head before he said: "I'm trans."

Can't actually describe the relief, because I thought he was going to report abuse or something equally awful.

And I realised something important: he was terrified of my reaction. I held his whole future in my hands at that moment. I have never been more conscious of the absolute power a parent has over their child - to buoy them up or hurt them, give them protection or reject them.

Yes, a child can have certain emotional pull over their parent when they're older - but not, when they are a child depending on you for care, control. Iwas holding not only his happiness and self-worth in my hands, but his future as well.

I can't describe how scared he was in that moment - and so many trans people experience the same.

I'm a childhood abuse survivor. I know what it's like when an adult you trust removes your sense of safety and happiness. I felt that power in my hands and heart, so much that it hurt me. And I realised: I didn't want it. In fact, I hated knowing I had ir. I could have done anything to him in that moment, and it would define our relationship.

So, I hugged him. I told him that we loved him no matter who he was, and always would. I said I didn't know anything about being trans and would have to learn.

The discussions began later, the next day. Was he sure he wasn't just a masculine-presenting woman? I worried about things I'd read about fertility. So he explained about how it felt to be trans, that he preferred a feminine presentation anyway and that he wasn't sure if he wanted to have kids, he was a teenager! About surgery being banned for teens. And so much more.

I later read about trans children, and the experiences of trans people. I followed trans people on social media, and tentatively posted about it.

Dozens of accounts began to pile on mine, bots and trolls reacting to the word 'trans' and I realised that there was a huge, entirely ignorant anti-trans community who virulently hated trans people. And I began to see why he'd been so afraid.

In the weeks after, as he talked about a new name and we got used to calling him by his new pronouns, I noticed a massive and quite humbling change in him. He stopped pretending to be a girl and relaxed into his real self - and it was obvious this was who he had been all along. I watched him visibly brighten, become more confident and realised he had been hiding so much from me.

I realised the person he was, was nothing like me. He wasn't a girl. He was a trans boy. While still being exactly the same person.

Lots of other people who had known him before were fearful of how to treat him and wary of giving offence. Until they realised he's exactly the same kid, just more honest about who he is. Everyone - his grandmother, born in the 1940s, included - just adapted.

The transphobic school bullying came later, and darkened our lives. I'm not sure how he would have got through it without our support.

Any parent who centres themselves when their child comes out, is a narcissist and an abuser. Desiring to control your child above respecting them, is deeply abnormal. I'm astounded by the vanity and selfishness displayed by parents who do it. Especially those fixated on their child's body. No change my son could make to himself would alter my love for him. He's still a very ardent feminist, we still talk about misogyny and it's many effects.

The fact my son is trans is probably the least interesting thing about him. It doesn't affect his life anything like as much being autistic and deaf affects his brother's. But they have one thing in common: the angry, entitled and violent behaviour of people who don't like difference.

Because he experienced bullying from a young age, my deaf son hides who he is. He lip-reads to a very high standard and just doesn't tell many people he's deaf. Worries me to death because it means he doesn't wear his hearing aids when he walks through town - I've pulled him out of the path of a car twice. But he fears encountering ignorant bullying again.

My trans son can't hide who he is. He is socially transitioned and everyone knows this. He's visibly androgynous, and gets all kind of angry reactions - almost all from men - demanding to know "what you are". Although he has a very full life, working and studying, with many friends, he knows he is at permanent risk from those who hate trans people. There are many of them.

I think sometimes about how he survived school. How he used to refuse to attend, sometimes for weeks, for fear of being attacked or sexually assaulted again. How his teachers intervened, and gay teachers volunteered to walk the corridors with him to give protection. How there was no protection at all on the school bus.

I think about how he survived it because of our absolute and unwavering support for him. How he'd come home desperate for me to hug and reassure him after a day of exhausting hypervigilance.

But that came naturally to me. No way was I ever going to have him go through what I did, lonely and suicidal with no one to talk to at home and feeling unsafe. Any parent who rejects their child for who they are, and makes it all about them, is a monster.

I want him in my life, but more than that I'm not an abusive person. I have since learned that this isn't a common reaction, and that many trans teenagers are ostracised, rejected and often thrown out of home. I know three young trans women who were all told they needed to leave home when they went to university. None of them have parental support. I know how much that hurts them, and how permanently broke they are because of it.

I can't ever imagine treating a child like that, because who my child is doesn't define me. I wouldn't care if he detransed tomorrow (which is deeply unlikely, but whatever), that's his business. What I care about, is the unbridled anger directed at people like him. To know that it's their .parents doing it, is unspeakable.

By the time someone is a mature adult, and in the position of beginning to look after their parent(s), that unconditional love has often formed. When looking after a very elderly parent, that love is very similar to the love of a parent for their young child, in my experience. Full circle.

I do, of course, recognise that not all child / parent relationships follow that course. We are all imperfect people, parents and children alike, and things can go wrong, sometimes horribly wrong. They are more likely to go horribly wrong when one party has unreasonable expectations of the other party. We differ on what expectations are reasonable and unreasonable.

For crying out loud READ. THE. ARTICLE!

Again, it's not about mummy being sad that the daughter doesn't want to reminisce about first periods and bras.

Its about a total rewriting of the entire family history, and that the mother is supposed to be happy about that.

That last bit is the killer. The 'trans' teen is the only one allowed to have any feelings. Anyone else having feelings, even if they are not being cited as a reason to not transition, is 'abusive' and needs to be cut off.

Then where will that child be at 22, 24, 30, 40 when they've cut off their loving family and the people on Reddit who encouraged them to transition have long gone?

Up a very lonely shit creek.

@TransParentlyAnnoyed
You probably handled the initial conversation pretty well. But I would suggest that at the point you went online to read about trans experiences you understandably will have taken on a very one sided view of the whole gender debate. Do you equate the people who bully your child online with the GCs on here? Is that why you're here? To fight back?

What I care about, is the unbridled anger directed at people like him. To know that it's their .parents doing it, is unspeakable.

There is no unbridled anger there is a simple firm resolved not to be cowered by emotional blackmail, not to loose site of the truth just because it's a child, not to give in to tantrums and unreasonable demands, not to support delusion just because they're a child.
In other words parents who are committed to being parents, which requires them to protect their child, even if it's from themselves, but especially from outside influences that will lead them to nothing but harm.
Parents who are being the adult in the relationship, which is what every child needs first and foremost from their parents.

Quite @RapidOnsetGenderCritic The whole situation is based on complying with a lie. The language - gender affirming care - means agreeing to x sex hormones and surgery otherwise the child or person will potentially kill themselves. The whole thing is coercive behaviour. Do as I demand or else. And off this huge profits are made.

Trans is an overvalued belief and needs to be repathologised so it is treated as a mental illness and treated with kindness and not mutilating surgery.

I do compare it to anorexia which we do not treat with surgery. Happy to be schooled as why trans is different especially in young women. I suspect many female to male transitioners had co morbidities such as autism or self harm diagnosed. Happy to be schooled.

I don't know why some posters (actually, I do) are so keen to insist that mothers are not allowed to feel grief that their children have chosen to mutilate and medicalise their healthy body.

That's in no way the same as saying 'children ought to feel unconditional love for their parents'.

Its also not the same as saying 'your child is no longer your child if they transistion '

These are just straw men.

Why would you argue so vociferously that other women are not allowed to have feelings about something significant happening to their children?

The only reason I can think of is desperation to stamp on anything that could possibly be seen as negative about transistioning.

We are constantly told that 'trans people exist'. Grieving mothers exist too.

Adult children don't dictate to their parents, in normal circumstances. But this scenario is very common indeed when the adult child has announced a trans identity. Why?

TPA appears to be permanently aggrieved that some people disagree with their views on gender and see transistion as anything other than an unequivocal good. It must be exhausting.

I dislike cosmetic surgery for reasons other than repairing damage but I wouldn't go so far as to grieve if any of my family had it - suggest keeping a sense of proportion.

I had friends who were in a children's home. Their experiences of life in that home were not at all rosy, and at the age of 16 they were left with no support whatsoever, until they had probation officers trying to rehabilitate them into being functioning members of society. That was their reality, dumped at 16 without the emotional maturity to cope, chose burglary (some choice!) and when they were caught, got thrown into borstal and the prison system. At least they didn't have anyone telling them that if they transitioned and took oestrogen their lives would improve. I don't know, but it is quite likely that they were sexually abused in the children's home.

Your attempt to play down the unnecessary mutation that's involved in 'transing' and your attempt to dismiss and demean other people's concerns about it, is just whataboutery. Your attempting to deflect from the subject because you have no valid arguments to back up your POV.

Have you read the article?

Its pretty disingenuous to suggest that a teen wishing to embark on a process that will make them a life long medical patient and likely lead to sterility is nothing more than a nose job.

Do you also tell people who refer to transistion as 'life saving medical care' to 'keep a sense of proportion'?

ETA: to highlight from my post that you quoted
Why would you argue so vociferously that other women are not allowed to have feelings about something significant happening to their children?

What exactly IS your background?

If it isn’t an illness, why does it need off licensed drugs and irreversible surgeries to make people who believe they are something they can never be feel happy? Why does it need those people threaten to kill themselves if they can’t get what they want? Or self harm if their parent refuses to use opposite sex pronouns? That sure sounds like someone in the midst of a significant mental illness to me.

It's a lovely story TPA but I can't help reading it thinking that if only you had been able to assure her that she was not a boy in a girl's body when she first started showing signs of dysmorphia, she could just have been a normal tomboy and avoided all the angst and bullying and a whole life ahead of her now where she isn't quite going to fit into the world.

Please don't try and tell me she was born that way, because you've explained before how she grew up and it was as clear as day that your own sexuality and your concerns about bringing up a girl when you were not a very feminine woman yourself had a lot to do with how your daughter has turned out.

I think that depends on which experts you talk to and what the risk is of them being sacked if they are open about what they really believe.

The message you would have got from me is nothing of the sort. It seems to be part of your viewpoint that parents are entirely responsible for their children's understanding of the world. "They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad; they do not mean to, but they do." Larkin may have had a point, but it's far from the whole story.

It is true that typically men have to learn to control their aggression more than women typically have to. Men are on average physically stronger and can cause more damage. Also testosterone has a powerful influence on men's behaviour, and that is something adolescent males have to come to terms with and learn to avoid the excesses of uncontrolled urges. This is not easy.

I learned in my teens and twenties that gender stereotypes are harmful. It was fine for me to be a bit effeminate. It was not a positive message that men had to be leaders and women had to be followers, or that men were expected to take to DIY like a duck to water, or that men shouldn't be emotional but women were expected to be so. I rejected those ideas, and gradually found my place, and DW's, in our marriage, which has become much more equal and mutually dependent and supportive than how it started off. If gender identity ideas had replaced the feminist ones I came across, I have no idea how I would have ended up. Maybe convinced that my 'feminine' aspects meant I had to be in some sense a woman? That's plausible, certainly.

I am horrified at how much stereotypical behaviour has made a comeback as an ideal, both in incel and Tate style circles, and in trans circles where the stereotypes are just as important but reversed – instead of men having to be masculine, being masculine makes you a man, and instead of women having to be feminine, being feminine makes you a woman. All nonsense, and all unhelpful.

At what point did you decide not to tell your DC that it was impossible to change their sex?

How old is he now @TransParentlyAnnoyed ?

…and change name.

...and spells it wrong