He had completely gotten the point but is afraid you’ll do an irreversible mistake. He is clearly looking out for your best interest. Because he loves you.
He’s trying for baby steps, but he’s actually almost running, trying to balance, and reaching out for your hand…
:)
Sounds like he’s done a lot of research and has kept an open mind. He’s also wise in suggesting to go into therapy and see if there may be other causes/co-causes.
Anecdotal, but a friend of mine has ADHD and once she started treatment for that she also lost like 95% of her feelings of dysphoria and decided to postpone transitioning until she could figure her shit out a bit more.
Years later she’s decided she’s fine as she is and saved herself shittons of money and physical suffering with no real drawback.
It’s important not to be emotionally attached to a diagnosis.
I’m afraid that the whole discussion is so polarized at the moment that it is hindering progress. On one hand, conservative people want to completely ban hormone therapy and puberty blockers. On the other hand, progressive people want to ban the pathologizarion of gender affirmation. There a huge lack of nuance in the discourse.
When human and social situations are interpreted in simplistic one-size-fits-all ways by people who have linked such interpretation to being a member of a “political side”, their takes are not really about what’s best for the people involved, even when they claim otherwise.
There really isn’t any “one size fits all” approach for most human subjects, specially something as socially significant as gender is in most societies.
I agree with you, and would go further.
A while back, there was a study (IIRC) from the UK that recommended against gender transitioning for children. No surprise, it created quite an uproar before it was retracted.
At no point in any of the media coverage or comments on Lemmy, etc, did I see any discussion of the study itself. To this day, I have no idea if there was an issue with the methodology. It seems that no one, neither supporters nor opponents, bothered to read past the headline. Many of them were very fervent in their beliefs, but that wasn’t enough to get them to look at the details.
This is also very bad for science - there are countless headline-grabbing “studies” that fail basic requirements. I’m sure you’ve seen things like “Is coffee/chocolate/etc good for you? A new 10-day study of 23 people suggests that…”. Which of course should get picked apart.
If we aren’t following the science, then what are we even trying to do?
(As an aside, I suspect that study was flawed, but I can’t confirm. It goes against the conclusions widely agreed upon, and would require significant rigor and evidence to support the claim)
On priors, you’re talking about the Cass report, which was in fact massively flawed, and I saw a great deal of discussion on it. Among other issues, they tossed out a lot of studies, and wrote the report from the stance that the only studies worth looking at would have been double blind studies. I’m not sure if you’ve considered this specifically, but it’s pretty damn hard to blind starting to grow boobs or facial hair. Cass, the supposedly neutral party conducting the study, was handing out copies of “Irreversible Damage”, a scaremongering antitrans book about how the poor helpless young “women” were being seduced by big trans. It was garbage, and there’s plenty of writeups on it.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-k-s-cass-review-badly-fails-trans-children/
Thank you- this is exactly the sort of critique I had been expecting/hoping to find
I suffered from severe depressions as a teenager, and my therapist at the time suggested it might be due to gender dysmorphia. I was raised by women, no father figure, which made me a lil feminine in some characteristics. As a confused teen, i ate that idea up…
Years later i realized that wasnt it, and felt like my therapist was way too quick go with that idea. Clinging to a diagnosis was my way of keeping hope alive that i could fix the issue. I did fix it eventually, but not through gender reassignment surgery…
Shouldn’t hormones and surgery be the last option as that’s the most extreme, expensive and difficult to reverse option? Like make sure its not something else that can be treated with less invasive options first. Would be awful to go through a sex change when actually you just needed antidepressants.
But mental illness is in a pretty shit state right now.
Just telling my family (russian, old values) about this wouldve been a death sentence. Im glad i had the foresight to wait it out as long as i could. My therapist was notorious among my self-help group for having a trigger-finger when it comes to diagnoses. That group was how i met my best friend, who id end up getting engaged with, 13 years after this whole thing :)
What seemed like gender dysphoria at the time, ended up turning out to be borderline personality disorder. Ive since learned to work with it and consider myself mostly ‘healed’. Even bearded men like being the little spoon spoon sometimes, aint nothing wrong with that :D
I’ve learned from trans friends that we share some experiences of gender, because I generally don’t fit the traditional masculine model despite being a cis male. I remember being interested in “girly” things as a kid and being frustrated that I wasn’t “supposed” to play with the toys that I wanted to I could see where in another life, with the right people saying the right things at the right times that could lead me to believe that I’m trans when I don’t actually seem to be
I’d say best response you could hope for, given that he is conservative before he’s dad :) best of luck
Yes, actually. Rational response. Good on him.
That’s an amazing response from a conservative.
That’s a supportive parent doing their best to understand something they seem to nearly realize they’ve been brainwashed to have a knee jerk reaction to.
If that ain’t love… 😊
I’m sure things aren’t perfect, but this person respects you.
For a conservative that’s amazing, I’d be kinda proud of him. I’d comply with his request, assuming he wants you to see a couple other doctors and not attend some conversion camp or something. I’d just frame that as getting a second/third opinion, basically, which is always a good idea anyway.
I’m just worried “unbiased therapy” means “therapist who doesn’t believe trans people exist.”
Given he seems to bwlive they exist, I doubt thats the case.
This is the best that anyone can hope for, i think.
I would remind him that you love him and appreciate his support.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m impressed that he actually researched the issue, and from non-extremist sources, too! This has got to be a difficult, frightening thing for any parent, so he’ll need as much patience and reassurance as possible. He sounds like he’s definitely worth it.
This is almost identical to what I said to my kid. I explained that it would be a process for both of us and he would need to be as patient with me as I was with him.
My kid has not spoken to me in 4 years. Two slip ups (said she or her twice accidentally) and me saying I was just going to avoid pronouns until it sunk in. Nope. “Fuck you dad. You’ll never see me again.”
His mother messed him all up though. We were very young when she got pregnant (I was 15) and naturally we didn’t make it as a couple.
He was allowed to eat family packs of Reece’s multiple times a day until he was so overweight it was ungodly. I was the bad guy for trying to do anything about it. He had to have a meal separate from everyone his entire life. If the family was having baked chicken and vegetables, my son was having ramen noodles or chicken nuggets. The body issues started there. When I refused and said, “Eat with the rest of us and eat healthy or I can’t help you. I can’t in good conscience feed you pop tarts and ramen for dinner.” Mom used this to paint me as some kind of monster who was starving my kid.
When the kid got to middle school those kids ate him alive. He ended up developing an eating disorder and starving/surviving on lettuce. Mom finally decided it was time to do therapy and blamed me for it. “You just had to make a big deal about what he ate!”
My kid has been spoiled and turned into a self obsessed person who I don’t recognize and I’d cut a foot off to just have my kid back. He’s an adult though, and I can’t change any of it.
All I can do at this point is hope that he regrets this one day but I don’t have much hope. That kid could have a best friend and love them with everything, and then just cut it off like it was nothing over some small thing and never speak to that person again, so my hope is very small.
Sorry to spill all that here. This just made me spin when I read it.
All I can do to show my love is keep paying for the services. (Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc.) And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s laughing at me for it, but I’m happy to be doing something, anything. As silly and small as it is, it’s all I have left.
Y’all take care and if a trans kid reads this and can relate to this story, please don’t skip on your family because things aren’t going the speed you like. My kid stopped talking to everyone in my family overnight and never had a conversation with anyone but me. I get that it can be hard and I’m certain there are people who you will have to leave behind, but don’t cut your lifeline/support network and burn bridges unnecessarily. You could end up regretting it and causing yourself and everyone else a lot of unnecessary pain.
That is heartbreaking. I’m so sorry. It sounds like there isn’t much you could have done differently, though. It’s an absolute shame that trying to be the responsible adult caused you to be painted so negatively. 😞
Sorry to hear that, thanks for sharing, sending love from the other side of the screen.
I have a sister who similarly decided the rest of us were “toxic” because my parents tried to motivate her into getting off their couch and doing something with her very hireable college degree.
Haven’t heard a peep from her in years. Shit stings every day.
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Assuming “unbiased” is being used authentically here, this sounds like a good plan. An additional perspective is usually a good thing, especially when a lot of “brain stuff” is co-mingled and affects our emotions in ways we often can’t predict.
This is heavily medicalised but yes, this is better than basically anyone from a conservative background could hope for. There is a lot of misinformation out there and it is easy to find an echo chamber that would support rejecting you, so keeping in line with his current sources is a good idea.
There’s a long road waiting for him, but seems like he is walking in the right direction now.
Good dad
Yes. He’s not knocking you for who you are, and is suggesting less expensive and dramatic treatments first, but is saying that if it doesn’t work then he supports the transition.
I think this is about supportive and level headed you can get, especially for a conservative.
It’s honestly fairly level headed for anyone. Make sure your loved ones aren’t making dramatic and life-altering changes without being sure they want it? Seems reasonable to me. Especially for a topic that is largely a muddled mystery for the average person.
That’s awesome.
As for therapy before surgery, I think this is not a bad suggestion. An unbiased and professional therapist would not try to change who you are, but to see if you can learn to be happy with who you are.
Personally I’m a big fan of breaking down gender norms, and for people to say a big “fuck that” to all the expectations that comes with a specific gender. I know being trans is different, but I can’t help but suspect that in some occasions (not all) feeling like not belonging to a given sex is contingent upon not so much the body itself, but the stupid-ass expectations we place upon a given gender as a society. Breaking down these norms is hard and important work in its own right, and something one could explore with a (serious) therapist before taking it to a surgeon. If it works, you can embrace fully who you are without an intrusive and expensive procedure. If it doesn’t, surgery is still an option. So in my (possibly ignorant) mind, suggesting therapy alone first is not a bad thing, though it can sound like it.
Most importantly, it seems he loves you and supports you unconditionally, and he has made a real solid (and successful) effort to understand as well. So whatever you do, it seems he’ll be there for you even if it requires effort from his side. You have a good father.
Honestly, it would be great if people actually held themselves to being required to actually read the Wikipedia page for whatever controversial issue it is they are woefully ignorant of and have an actual discussion about that as it was analyzed and described
I think his is absolutely the right course of action. We as humans have a weird psyche and we sometimes externalize internal issues and project them outwards either onto ideas or people.
So for example, incels have serious issues with self-worth and they externalize those issues into hatred of women and society at large for their position in life. They feel, perhaps, they are not the man they feel like they should be- strong, handsome, wealthy, etc. And so they take blame at external circumstances in order to lessen the cognitive dissonance that if they are lonely and undesired- it’s almost always due to their own decision making and perspective on life.
So for example a young male teen may feel all sorts of negative emotions and decide that gender dysphoria must be the diagnosis- when maybe he’s just a little feminine and attracted to men. But if they start to identify with the trans label prematurely, they could end up doing unnecessary damage to themselves and their development.
I wholeheartedly and unapologetically support trans people and in my opinion if transitioning is determined the most effective treatment to gender dysphoria by one or two clinical physicians, I would absolutely support my kid transitioning. Trans kids have a very high rate of suicide so this is actually a very serious life and death diagnosis. It’s more dangerous statistically than some types of cancer. And if my kid had cancer, I would want to obviously look at all possible treatments plans we could take.
But just like the dad, I would start with regular therapy and work our way up. See what else is going on. I would also spend time with my kid and really try to get a sense for what’s troubling them. I don’t think there is a substitute for a parent who cares.
Anyhow, interesting post, thanks for sharing this intimate exchange. It’s a reminder that we are all humans and even those who we may label as “conservative” cannot be condensed down to one statement. This is one of the reasons, for example, I love Florida even though it’s a red state. I’m the furthest thing from right wing, but you’ll find that many Latinos who identify as right-wing have many views that would be considered “progressive”.
We’re all ultimately people who hold multitudes.
