Explicit
“I’m a Mum in London. Three years ago, my beautiful complicated, kind, loving daughter revealed to us that she was really a boy, starting a journey that now feels more like an open wound than a transformative and healing process.”
Transcript
I’m a Mum in London.
Three years ago, my beautiful complicated, kind, loving daughter revealed to us that she was really a boy, starting a journey that now feels more like an open wound than a transformative and healing process.
Never ever, not once or even slightly showed any signs of wanting to be or identifying as a boy in the preceding 18 years. Some will say, Oh, that’s because she was brought up with gender stereotypes and the need to conform in a patriarchal society. And to those people, I would say, bollocks. And then make clear that neither I, her masculine mother, nor her feminine father conform to gender stereotypes. Never made to wear girly clothes unless she wanted to, she chose to spend birthday and Christmas money on Bratz dolls and makeup, because we bought her Lego, Meccano, craft supplies, books and music.
She wanted to learn dancing, so for 12 years I dutifully took her to ballet, then tap, then points, then whatever else she wanted to do. I scraped her hair into buns; watched YouTube clips to see how to apply makeup because I never have; stitched sequins in netting; glued pom poms and plastic gems on to show outfits while waiting with the other mothers.
Then puberty and GCSEs hit and it became clear that she was struggling with changes to her body. Bits that she didn’t like and couldn’t look at and the unwanted attention that it received. This may have been when her body dysmorphia disorder began. She’d always been a really, really good child: no arguments, no slamming doors. She was really awful at lying, so didn’t bother. Put study and education before everything. She had a really small pool of friends and didn’t really go out much. We thought we were lucky parents.
We now realise she’s probably on the autistic spectrum. We would gently rib her about being more of an adult than we were and that she needed to go out and experience the world: enjoy herself and make mistakes. We never thought that she would take our suggestions as instructions.
So, one year at uni she comes home to have “the conversation”. We’re all there – siblings, me and Dad.
I am a boy. My first reaction was in my head: Are you fucking kidding me? And out loud I said, Well, that’s a thing. Do you want a drink?, while reaching for the single malt. Then I got up and hugged her. That’s when I knew she was in pain and scared. Then my world fell apart because I realised she wasn’t going to let me help her. I was going to have to stand by and watch her mutilate and medicate herself in search of her “true self”, all the while knowing that she wasn’t gonna find that person at the point of a scalpel.
How could I possibly know all this? Because we’d watched my niece follow the same pattern some years earlier. Affirmation, testosterone, surgery. Subsequently becoming an alcoholic recluse; avoiding the eyes of those that loved her; furious, deceitful and unhappy.
Just to clarify, there are 10 other children in the extended family of the same generation; one gay, no lesbians, but but the statistical anomaly of two trans men, both gay at that. Go figure.
Fast forward to recent times, and our daughter has been on testosterone for a year. Her eyes are dull, and the man she’s becoming is a bit of a dick. Aggressive, argumentative, non-creative, non-communicative. We can’t stop any of this now, because she’s considered an adult. So we have to stand by.
Do I have hope? I don’t know. I will keep pushing to get her the therapeutic help she needs for body dysphoria and dysmorphia. I’m determined to get her an official diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder and the support available, and I will keep loving her no matter what. But I don’t really like the man she’s turning into and I don’t know how much longer she’ll be able to keep us in her life, because our honesty and love makes living the lie so much harder for her. And I know like all cults, her online trans family are encouraging her to cut us out.
For something that should have been a wonderful and transformative time for her, I do wonder why we are all so very, very sad.