Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

Congrats, Brad! Excited for u.

That video is so cute and now stuck in my head.

Yay Brad xx :)

Petition to remove You Know Who from his last remaining platform..

https://www.change.org/p/substack-inc-substack-take-corporate-sociable-responsibility-remove-graham-linehan-from-the-platform

he's still got his youtube chit-chats with gay bigot and question lady, but is so bad at the form that he's probably not that much of a menace there

I can think of one kind of platform I’d like to see him on

brad <3

Well, that trans FB group I'm helping admin is opening up at 12 noon EST today. Come by if you can, I'd love to see some fellow ILXors there.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mytranshomies/?ref=share&exp=c41f

The group founder has just changed the group URL.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mytransfriends/?ref=share&exp=c41f

hello all. I should know better than to go to the internet for advice but thought I'd start here since we're mostly anonymous. yesterday our almost 16 year old announced to my wife and I that they were trans. This came utterly out of the blue; thee is nothing feminine about this child, and they have never shown any real interest in this topic to us. I'm trying to be sensitive and remember pronouns here but forgive me if I slip up. Our kid HAS been depressed, rather significantly this year, but so have we and the pandemic has put a pall on everything (also I just got fired from my job and generally everything feels like shit). Our kid said it 'doesn't really change anything' and to the extend they were willing to discuss it, they wanted to be called she/they, and (this is the hardest part for my wife and I) be called Ivy.

Not sure what the path forward here is but my wife is having a very hard time; I probably am too but I'm so emotionally numb with so much other shit going on (looking for work, my mother is dying of cancer) that it really hasn't sunk in. I just want our kid to be happy. I think we need to find a family therapist. One thing to note also is that our kid has shown sudden interests in lots of things and then dropped it a few months later. We live in Berkeley so obviously trans support is high but trans talk is also everywhere, so I'm wondering if depression has played a part in this and our kid is just looking for a better identity. Any helpful discussion welcome. I've always been a strong ally for trans people, have trans friends, know people with trans kids (but those kids were trans from like, age 2)...but this is somehow more difficult to deal with because it makes us second guess every assumption we had.

akm, we are going through a similar situation here and I will say that I got some pretty good advice here when we were starting to process it.

I think it is possible to be both supportive (in a non-dismissive way) while also accepting that the situation may be fluid.

No one will ever be able to know whether pandemic stuff - and the general suckitude of pretty much everything - is obscuring the picture. But ultimately it doesn't matter, because when it comes too kids? My mantra is: "It's the love, stupid."

May pm you on the more sensitive details, but do wish to broadcast good wishes for your family.

thanks YMP, I'd welcome a dm.

One thing I always think when people think a kid might be "going through a phase that they'll grow out of" is does that matter?

You can choose to show your child that you'll love and support them while they explore their identity, or you can choose to show your child that you will judge them and claim authority over them. That's the case whether this is a permanent change or not.

Also, not every trans journey is as straightforward as "I always knew". Sometimes you just know something is wrong, but not what that something is. If there's nothing outwardly feminine about your child, they may have been compensating for feeling feminine internally by acting/dressing masculine - but not every trans woman is super feminine, and not every trans man is super masculine! Basically, don't take lack of previous indicators as a sign to think this is a passing whim. Trust your kid, and if they change their mind then still trust them.

I genuinely wish you the best of luck - therapy is definitely worth doing, but try not to frame seeking therapy as a way to solve a problem that your child has caused.

(The above post is not meant to sound accusatory, btw, and I hope it doesn't come across that way)

whatever you do, please do not frame this as "maybe this is a manifestation of depression," especially in front of them. The last thing you want in this situation is for them to feel you do not take them seriously or do not respect them, and that will shut down any dialogue they want to have with you further.

teenage masculinity can be so stifling and overbearing for anyone who doesn't fit in the characteristics expected of them from pressures in everyday life. I hated the idea that I had to be into football and girls, and avoid stuff that wasn't masculine. Gender is a spectrum, not a binary, and it can be hard to place yourself upon it, so my advice would be to let them figure it out in an open, no-pressure way.

What is it that worries you about this, is the question to ask yourself. Are you worried their life will be more difficult? You can make it easier for them by being compassionate and supportive. Are you worried about grieving for the person they've always been? They were always going to grow up, change, and become their own person anyway - this is a heightened version of that, maybe trickier to navigate but it doesn't revoke the love you feel for them. Are you worried how your broader friends and family will react? Leave it to them - other people's emotions are not yours to manage.

There are far worse things that could happen to your family than your kid being truthful about wanting to live the most authentic version of their life.

These are wonderful comments, thank you all

I consider myself a homosexual cis man. But it wasn't always so clear-cut for me. In my teens I struggled because I didn't fit in with the way I was expected to perform gender. My voice is high and I talk with my hands - I'm really camp, naturally. Twenty years ago there wasn't the trans visibility there is today and I think had there been, I might have gone through "a phrase." To be honest I doubt I would have ever gotten beyond "hmm, maybe he/his pronounds aren't quite right for me" but it would have reflected how I felt about my identity then, and who can say they are the same person they were twenty years ago, really?

Yeah what emil.y said

also I have every faith that you will be OK because, already, you've got a kid who feels they can come to you and be direct about what's going on in their head with this. Obviously being gay is not the same as being trans. But I was outed to my parents, and my worst fears about it were confirmed when I had to go stay with a friend for two nights because I wasn't welcome at home.

As boxedjoy notes, folks in previous generations may have felt a lot of the same things but didn't quite have the language or the social space in which to express them, so some of what we are seeing in current teenagers may be what should have been happening all along.

FWIW I know I am in a socially liberal bubble, and I recognize that my kid has definitely self-selected a queer friend group. But it should be noted that we know remarkably few cis het teenagers. It's utterly normal in their social circle to put people's pronouns in your phone contacts to help keep track, because you will see a very wide range of presentations and identities. They can and do update and evolve with some frequency.

Not claiming any special insight or authority here, just: This seems to me that this is the world that my child and their peers are building. Or trying to build. It will look different from what I grew up with.

Which is as it should be.

Honestly, my parents thought I couldn't possibly know that I was gay when I came out to them at 14, and essentially pushed me back into the closet until I was 16 and tried again. They then pushed me back into the closet again after a disastrous family therapy session wherein my mother wept and accused me of ruining her life because of my decision, and the therapist did nothing to defend me or tell her she was out of line.

I finally came out at 22, for good, and tho it was rocky for a year or so, my parents are incredible and supportive and love my husband like a member of the family now.

But the emotional scars of my teenage experience have lasted, and continue to influence my life in ways that I sometimes don't even recognize.

As others have mentioned, obviously being a queer cis male is not the same as being trans, but I just want to agree with what YMP and emil.y and others have said about supporting and loving yr kid as they explore and figure out their gender and sexual identity. It pains me to think of other young people going through the pain and fear that I had to go through.

That "you couldn't possibly know" line always makes me mad.

Like, I sure as hell knew I was straight at that age. So did my parents, so did theirs.

Also "shoving it in our faces." Like, how much is hetero stuff shoved in people's faces basically from birth, imagining how someone's wedding will be or saying that if two opposite-sex kids are playing someone's going to say something about them being married someday, etc.

Don't get me started on that type of thing—in 2010, years after I came out for the final time, my mother told me she thought I was "trying too hard to be gay." I just said, "I am gay, I'm not trying anything, you need therapy," then didn't speak to her for about 8 months.

not from my own experience but seeing the experience of friends, as parents the danger here is your own unresolved fears and/or disappointment manifesting as absence of love & support for your child.

like: a parent can see a name change as a personal attack, like “i gave this to you & you don’t want it!?” and if it’s internalized those feelings may express as betrayal.

personally i think family therapy could be dangerous, your child took a huge step in saying all this out loud to you. seek therapy privately if thats what you need. don’t not talk to them, obv let your child know you love & support them … but be honest that you need time to absorb the change. don’t make them go through all of your adult feelings just yet, it can be way too much for them to take on board at once & they may interpret it bluntly as lack of support.

i think we tend to want to talk feelings out with loved ones before we fully know what they are, and without understanding that unburdening can result in a new burden for the other person.

get right independently first, together with your spouse, or with a therapist. and have the tools at your disposal to be able to talk to your child at the level *they* are at.

a parent can see a name change as a personal attack, like “i gave this to you & you don’t want it!?”

My wife most def went through a phase of this

it seems more common than ppl talk about

personally i think family therapy could be dangerous, your child took a huge step in saying all this out loud to you. seek therapy privately if thats what you need. don’t not talk to them, obv let your child know you love & support them … but be honest that you need time to absorb the change. don’t make them go through all of your adult feelings just yet, it can be way too much for them to take on board at once & they may interpret it bluntly as lack of support.

i think we tend to want to talk feelings out with loved ones before we fully know what they are, and without understanding that unburdening can result in a new burden for the other person.

This is a really great point, VG.

I was hesitating about contributing to the discussion bc I'm cis and not a parent, but I am a middle-school teacher, and I have a lot of kids in my classes who identify as trans or nonbinary, or who use a range of pronouns. Deferring to people with more personal experience, but a few thoughts:

I agree with the concern about family therapy. If you have doubts and anxieties about your kid's identity, it's going to be hard not to bring those out in front of them. The important thing is to create an environment for your kid in which their identity is completely accepted and not a subject for special concern and anxiety, any more than it was when you thought they were cis. Agree with the advice to go separately, work through those feelings, and figure out how to address any concerns you have about your kid's general happiness without questioning what they're telling you about their gender.

I think the main thing is to focus on the present, not try to project the future or worry about the past. All you know right now is how your kid tells you they identify right now. And that is valid, whether it lasts a few months or the rest of their life. Adolescence is a time of discovery, and even if your kid does not end up identifying as trans later in life, they still need the freedom and support to figure out their identity in their own way and at their own pace. For now, I would assume they are trans because it's what they are telling you. If they tell you something different later, that's when you adjust, but there's no point in trying to anticipate future changes that may never come.

And this has been said before, but do keep in mind that with any gender identity, the way you present and the way you feel are not the same thing and don't always "match," for lack of a better word. If you haven't noticed anything - i.e., your kid displaying an interest in female-coded clothes or activities or w/ever - that may mean there's been nothing obvious to notice, and it doesn't invalidate either your parenting or their trans identity.

like: a parent can see a name change as a personal attack, like “i gave this to you & you don’t want it!?” and if it’s internalized those feelings may express as betrayal.

i recently had a conversation about this with a friend who is trans ... where the topic was checking photo IDs for proof of vax at venues, and the challenges and trauma that trans people often have with that ... the deadnaming. My parents were fairly traditional about baby gender stuff, in the "we will wait until it is born to find out its official gender" but they were 90% sure that I was going to be born with male anatomy. Why? idk. So, they didn't give a whole lot of thought as to names for a girl. So, when I was born female, mom and dad were like, "Uh, what girl names did we agree on?" For whatever reason, they didn't just go with the feminine version of the boy name ... anyway, it was a "make do" situation. And as a cis-person, I made do with the name my parents gave me. However, the conversation I had with my friend, made me think more about the privilege (luck) of being able to/being comfortable with "making do" with that given name.

Shorter version -- if the name you chose for your child was something you and your wife put a lot of thought and care into choosing, I can definitely see your kid's rejection of that name as being painful. ... also, akm, I think I first met you when your wife was pregnant with said child?

*not saying my parents didn't think about what to name me ... they did ... but their choices (both male and female names) were the equivalent of painting a house gentrifier gray: bland and neutral and capable of upward mobility

I think 15-16 is a difficult age for parents in general; your kid is really starting to grow up and be the person they are going to be, and to distance themself in various ways from the choices you initially made for them, and it all means they're going to leave in a couple of years, and that's got to be hard in a lot of ways. Especially if two years of pandemic kept you from giving them everything you wanted to give them in their last years of childhood. Again, not a parent, but I would consider that maybe some of what you're feeling now is stuff you would be feeling anyway, as a normal part of parenting in difficult times.

I was certainly pulling away from parents around 15-16, partly because of their homophobia, but also because I had crushes on all the older boys I did theatre with and I wanted to hang out with them and smoke pot.

I definitely remember getting into arguments with my parents at that age about my name and how indicative it was of how boring and conventional they were and how I was very much "not that" ... and my mom's response (because my dad would just walk away or tune out when it came to arguments and emotionally fraught topics) was, "we knew you were going to be your own person, and we don't expect you to be like us, but we did the best we could, and if you want to not be the name we gave you, then we won't be upset, though we will probably slip up and call you by your birthname because we are creatures of habit, like you said, boring. ... Just don't change your name to Hitler, because then we would be upset and kick you out of the house."

xp I didn't pull away from my parents enough, in retrospect; I tried to stay a kid for much too long. A combination of being a people-pleaser, having a very anxious dad who I didn't want to worry, and being a late bloomer, probably on the ace spectrum, and confused by adulthood.

It makes me very happy when I see how many of my middle-school students already have this very distinct sense of identity and pride in who they are. I don't remember having a sense of clarity or pride about anything at that age.

(If I may briefly digress about my wonderful students: we did an assignment recently where they created ads for pets and then we had adoption interviews in class and the groups would ask questions - like "do you have a yard?" and then confer about the answer before saying, "Oui, tu peux adopter _____" or "Non, désolé." One group of students who all identify as gay created an ad for a 17-year-old genderfluid lesbian frog, which was then adopted by another student who identifies as gay. One of the adoption questions was "Are you gay?" because they wanted the frog to go to a gay home, and the answer was a very firm and happy "Oui!")

c'est adorable!

Sarah you are correct, my wife was pregnant with said kid one of the first times we met (actually we met earlier than that but I think the first time I played 21 Grand myself she was pregnant). Thank you all for the discussion on this topic; emotions have settled down at home slightly. We're not all sure where everything is going, but we're trying to be supportive and non judgmental and reaffirmed our love for our kid which I think helps a lot. Ironically discussions of this topic typically tend to be very binary: you either are for this 100% or you are an evil person, and really there are so many things at play that unless someone is going out of their way to be a bad actor, as long as people are being open in communication (which has been a challenge in my family in general) I think things can turn out alright. I hope I'm not being naive.

hi my older kid is trans. i have thought about starting a thread for parents of LGBTQ+ kids on ILX and linking to it here for interested nonparents who had input, but i honestly wasn’t sure how useful it would be or how much positive participation there would be. but if someone else wants to start it i would post on there.

I would take part. Now I'm the age my parents were when I started to come out, there is so much I can see that was flawed and disastrous in the way they handled it and I would love to save anyone going through what I did.

here you go:

IXL Parents of LGBTQ+ kids

forgive me the length, I obv have a lot of feelings:

I won’t presume to know yr child exactly, I’m trans and came out much later than sixteen, but figuring out yr gender feelings can be so much more complicated than having “always” been like this or that. I was assigned male at birth, but was very physically feminine as a kid and perceived as such. I think if I had been born later, and the only trans people I saw hadn’t been jokes or villains, almost universally presented as disgusting, lying, weird men in dresses, I might have processed it otherwise. but, I was born in the 80’s, so I rather aggressively tried to overcorrect, doing things like cutting my long eyelashes off at 5 or throwing away all of my less-than-properly-male-coded toys around 8. tbh, I was (and remain) more of a lil lesbian tomboy than the classic “I knew I was a straight high femme since I was conscious” cis-pleasing trans narrative, which I think is difficult to discern from the outside but is very real and something I’ve since shared with and had validated by many sapphic people, both cis and trans.

there are lots of reasons for a kid strongly performing an assigned gender presentation, and some of the time it’s because they definitely aren’t that gender and it terrifies them, or because they’re a more complicated mix of gender vibes than is easily identified from without, especially from a cis perspective

I would add that you should def take yr child’s lead on this, but if they ask for support in seeking hormone therapy, please listen. for transfeminine people, exposure to T has lifetime physical effects that we spend a lot of money and pain (physical and otherwise) trying to reverse.

I know there’s a lot of scaremongering out there right now, but tbrr a few months on HRT doesn’t have much of an irreversible effect (I know this for certain because I was on it for a few months, realized I might want kids, and went off for a couple more months to ~preserve fertility~. my skin stayed kinda soft but everything else snapped right back) and is often enough to know whether the mental effects make one feel better or worse

I’m not immediately prescribing yr kid 200mg spironolactone once daily or anything, just want to emphasize that knowledge and support would have saved me so much pain and regret.

I also strongly believe that every term we use when talking about gender and sexuality should be thought of as a weak point of gravity around which actual humans revolve at various orbits, and not as discrete prescriptive categories. resist the urge to strictly taxonomize, or to seek some perfect formula that determines their exact immutable place on the queer spectrum.

(I def wouldn’t recommend directly insisting yr child do the same, it’s simply not going to be a welcome message from a cis parent, but you might gently guide them toward prominent, articulate queer people who talk about this, especially since v online kids right now tend to get quite Linnaean about it all. a trans comedian, of all ppl, Jes Tom, pointed out how colonial these taxonomies get, quite literally “this is who you are, here is your flag, now resent each other and defend yr territory” and now I can’t unsee it)

there are, for instance, people with my same dysphoric relationship to their bodies but who use different words and ways of describing their identities. we don’t have a choice in who we are and how we feel in our assigned bodies and genders, but we do have some choice in how we metabolize and verbalize it, and those choices are all correct, even if they change and grow later.

finally, please take comfort in the fact that, if they are indeed she, it isn’t the worst of the past anymore. things are still way too hard, the social and legal barriers to treatment and acceptance still too high, and a reactionary movement keeps trying, and in some places succeeding, to roll things backwards, but it is more than possible to lead an overall safe, happy, successful life as an openly trans woman, and the path is so, so much less of an active minefield than it once was.

Are you able to find any counselling services in your area to help with this ? Not "conversion therapy or any such thing" just for support?

Welp, just explained shit to my brother (who I knew is in Germany an hour ahead and asleep by now), then to my sister (who I got them blue ticks from, so she has read my statement but... has not responded). The Canadians are being very helpful currently. Gunna talk to my mother tomorrow but oof... this vodka will be run out by then...

Best of luck to you

I've been finding out what gender dysphoria feels like. Turns out it's quite shit :(

it's not much fun. i'm sorry. i thought for years i couldn't have it bc i haven't wanted to pursue diagnosis or medical intervention (for complicated reasons) or fully commit to being one or the other like i thought you had to. but i'm pretty sure i do and it explains a lot of childhood (& adult) weirdness

I'm not sure if I want to go down the medical intervention route either. I hope you're able to experience some gender euphoria at least some of the time.

I thought I was nonbinary but something's shifted in my brain over the last couple of weeks and now I'm wondering if I'm maybe trans. I've been feeling some discomfort around my body in a way that I didn't before. Is it possible for a nonbinary person to start to experience this kind of dysphoria for a while and then for it to just go away again? I hope the answer is yes but I suspect that's not how it works :(

it's possible but it may be trying to tell you something- I'm still not sure what that is in my case. I would probably seek some sort of treatment if money, family and politics weren't things to consider

trans/nonbinary don't have to be opposed, you can have both or drop one or the other- you can also be a nonbinary trans man or trans woman - or anything else that feels like it fits better at whatever moment. I like agender or genderqueer more for how I feel but nonbinary works for me too

there's a lot of pressure coming from all sides about needing to be certain about being one thing or the other and consistently being that thing - which I don't think anyone is actually like including the straightest cissest people - but you can use whatever label or gender expression feels best for the situation you're in. although if you do converge on something that really feels like you then grab it (and if that doesn't happen it's not a problem at all, though it might sometimes be useful to pretend that it has, for pragmatic/strategic/explanatory reasons)

if you have or can find or make some space in which you can play around with it a bit you can and should do that (that doesn't ever have to stop unless you want it to). I hope you can find a good way to move towards wherever it is you need to go or whoever it is you want to be

and if that turns out to be you all along that's great

(btw I don't mean to suggest people who were born that way are wrong but that doesn't apply to me)

I've been feeling execussively fluid lately partly due to covid/internet/substance fueled dissociation and I'm so fucking confused about this stuff all the time. i'm autistic/adhd which is inseparable from my gender problems and those diagnoses will be impediments to accessing trans-related care, given this country. I rely on state benefits which I'm paranoid about being cut off from (again) if I try anything funny- and I don't want to wait years for some treatment that might not come for something I only sort-of-maybe think need, which will upend my relationships and put me even more in the crosshairs of an exterminationist eugenicist political tendency than i already have been. none of this is ideal and some of it is cowardice and I'm arguing against the part of myself which is probably right here bc what I probably need also feels like the last thing i need right now. but sooner or later something will have to give

That sounds so hard for you. I don't know if I want to wait years for treatment that I may or may not want either. And yeah, I know that someone can be NB and trans and that it takes time to figure it all out, the not knowing and confusion is still difficult though

It doesn't seem like any of that is cowardice on your part by the way