Lily is a mum in London, England. Her daughter desisted after spending a year identifying as a boy.
Transcript:
In 2015 my fifteen-year-old daughter, who had come out as a lesbian age 14, told me she was transgender. She had shown no discomfort with her female body as a child, although she’s always preferred jeans over dresses and enjoyed boisterous play. Prior to her announcement she’d spent a lot of time on YouTube watching ‘trans’ videos and, I later found out, she had created an online persona as a boy.
I was hugely concerned about the medical pathway that potentially loomed ahead. I read up everything I could on the subject and talked about it with her. I sent her articles, discussed feminism and asked awkward questions like: ‘How can you know what a boy feels like, when you’re a girl?’. I was very vocal about my disagreement, while making it clear I loved her and would always be there for her. I told her she was spending too much time online and had to leave her phone downstairs to charge at night. I encouraged her to get outside ‘in the real world’. I told her many teenagers have some sense of dysphoria and showed her a graph recording the increase in girls presenting to gender clinics.
She wanted to start college as a boy. I said no. She could have gone behind my back, but she didn’t. Sometimes we argued. I remember her shouting ‘I am not a lesbian!’ Then a close friend of hers desisted, which made a big impression on her. We’ve always been open to debate & disagreement in our family; I know my approach wouldn’t work for everyone. Just under a year after first ‘coming out’ to me, she sent me a text saying “I’m a girl. I was never a boy.”
Six years later, my daughter has just graduated from university. She is happy and confident, a lesbian, and looks back on that time with slight embarrassment. We are very close.