Current best practice AFAIK is exactly this. Gender care includes psychiatric/mental health, and occupational (ish) therapy that leads up to surgery after a lot of care. Gender dysphoria, like many things has an internal and external layer where society sets expectations and acts on us based on our gender expression in ways that can be quite brutal. Some folks may end up enby or smth or find something acceptable without surgery, which has its downsides. However none of this should preclude surgery as an option, as evidence has shown it is a highly effective treatment in our current context.
This is the biomedical view that focuses on dysfunction and suffering of the individual and addressing that dysfunction. There is a more philosophical/existential view worth understanding to balance the biomedical view. It is one that acknowledges that we are who we are and we develop the way we develop. If we are to flourish as humans and as a society, it must be through compassion for each others’ experiences as human subjects struggling to figure ourselves and each other out. Imposing one’s worldview on others by force is to treat humans as objects through manipulation. That’s mistaken and harmful. Compassion doesn’t mean you don’t stand up to bullies or you don’t resist injustice or you don’t fight back in self defense. It means you’re always seeking to humanize rather than dominate. This can mean supporting trans folks in accessing care or it can mean helping them to consider all their options.
Dude did the work. Well done.
That’s a good dad.
Therapy is probably a good idea regardless. If you spent your life “in the wrong body”, I would imagine it would still leave you with thousands of small mental wounds that add up. Granted, finding the right therapist can be an ordeal.
Yeah, whether or not someone believes they have gender dysphoria shouldn’t affect if they get therapy or not. I’d recommend it regardless, it helps a bunch.
It sure is a start. He cares for you, but he’s still worried you might regret a carefully planned decision you slowly came to terms with before telling him… Tell him you appreciate the support, and guide him as much as you can. :)
I keep trying to tell these goof balls, I didn’t go out and “Cut off my penis” because whatever they think the Left Wing Fox News told me to, VARIOUS DOCTORS signed off on it.
I even had one older gentleman tell me that he “Doesn’t believe in all this transgender nonsense”, but that he’s starting to come around, because after hearing me out he claimed all the possible diagnoses he had written down for what he thought was ailing me were “Things that [he] typically only see[s] in women.”
It’s a start. He’s still thinking that the dysphoria can be addressed on the mental side, not the body side.
Ask him how he would feel if he woke up with big sagging breasts tomorrow. He’d be afraid to go outside. He’d wear bulky clothes if he had to. He’d look in the mirror and not recognize himself. He would start calling his doctor to see what could be done. Get him to visualize this and then tell him That’s EXACTLY what it’s like. Ask him if he woke up with big sagging breasts, if instead of calling his doctor, he might consider going to therapy to make sure he isn’t just experiencing some other mental issues that are preventing him from being happy with his knee-knockers.
It’s a good start. It’s where everyone starts I think. Even trans people themselves first need to do a lot of soul searching and/or therapy in order to understand what they feel and why. It’s even harder for people on the outside to comprehend.
I see literally nothing wrong with this parents response; wanting your child to check all the boxes before making a life changing decision is good parenting.
One could always nitpick tone, but perfection is the enemy of good enough.
The one thing I will add is that the soul searching isn’t always visible, which was what made it so hard for my family/friends to understand when I came out. To them, it seemed like a very sudden and “snap” decision, when the reality was that I had spent years at that point reflecting and doing soul searching, but was so terrified about what it meant and how they might see me, I never told anyone about it.
I definitely think that this dad did a solid job overall, and even as an adult transitioning in their late 20s, I would have loved this response vs how my parents handled it…
I mean… It’s a feeling. Dysphoria is a complex thing, it’s not as clear cut as, let’s skip right to surgery.
https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/can-gender-dysphoria-go-away
Therapy and/or hormone treatment certainly might make enough difference to not require surgery anymore.
Let’s not pretend that the act of transitioning is something that should be taken lightly. There are trans people who have been wholly unprepared for actually living life as the opposite gender and kill themselves. For example, I’m seeing cases of Female to Male trans saying they were completely unprepared for how lonely it is to live as a man compared to a woman. So for some of them that negative feeling of loneliness ended up being even more detrimental and unpleasant to them than the original dysphoria.
The thing is - no one skips right to surgery.
I don’t want to minimize the experience of detransitioners, but they’re extremely rare. They just get platformed more, it’s a narrative that the media wants (especially the “Irreversible Damage” narrative - that trans men are little lost girls mutilating ourselves in response to misogyny). The vast vast majority of people who detransition/regret usually do so because of societal factors - eg, that transitioning can often cost you your job, social support network, put you in danger…
I’m entering middle age and have been on testosterone my entire life. I have still had doctors try to talk me into going off. Heck - to even get started, I had to lie about my sexual orientation - no one was giving me shit if I didn’t start off with “when I was four years old I threw a fit every time they made me wear dresses and only ever play with GI Joes.”
Yeah and even more people have killed themselves over the dysphoria and the world not listening to them or validating their right to make a choice.
Yes there is a complex mass of issues that can be difficult to separate out. But I ultimately think 2 things:
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a trans person’s certainty about their body is more important than my doubts about their mental state
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the complex mass of issues is partly created by a world that doesn’t validate their choices and condition. You can give them as much information as possible but then you have to back off and let them choose. It’s ultimately their body, their risk, their choice. There are examples where it doesn’t work out. Okay, fine, but don’t make everything about those. Most health care interventions carry some risk.
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I would say your conservative dad got tricked into believing some nonsense
This is the best that anyone can hope for, i think.
I would remind him that you love him and appreciate his support.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
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.
You sure this isn’t ChatGPT?
Have you ever used ChatGPT? This doesn’t read anything like what ChatGPT typically prouces
Maybe inspired by, but definitely not.
Oh look, a person who gets it!
I thought trans people weren’t supposed to be mentally ill? But he says gender dysphoria is a mental disorder? Is this doublethink?
There’s a massive difference between “believing you are the wrong gender is mental illness” and “being born/sorted into a gender that doesn’t represent you causes mental illness.” This is the latter.
It’s not perfectly correct indeed, gender dysphoria isn’t classified as mental disorder anymore with the DSM-V and ICD-11 as it doesn’t fit the bill (according to decades of science). It’s more of an in-congruence between brain structure and hormone chemistry (as well as the whole rest of the body), and this mismatch causing very subtle but sometimes intense suffering (which in turn CAN cause mental illness, obviously). This mismatch most likely is due to some hormone control mechanism during pregnancy not doing its thing as intended.
Given he gets the important points I wouldn’t try to correct him too much on that. He even demands something that’s basically part of the normal process: before receiving treatment that causes irreversible changes (hormones) there’s ALWAYS therapy and analysis involved. The only exception to this may be temporary hormone blockers, as those do not cause irreversible harm but give both the person and their therapist time to sort things out and find the correct answer.
(In case anyone wonders: No, we do not have a comprehensive way to tell anything conclusive from an MRI scan… yet)
Good first step, but I’m scared by the word “unbiased”.
For a conservative, there’s no way that means “unbiased”, it’s gonna man “un-leftist”, because clearly there are only “wokes” and “normals”, and he’ll expect you to see a “normal”.
Maybe he’s ahead of the curve, but that word strikes great in me.
At the very least he does seem to actually understand it without resorting to insulting terms or snide comments, so I have hope for him.
I really hope this works out for you, OP.
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.
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.
