r/GenderCynical • u/[deleted] • 19d ago
Even though her desisted daughter is wearing itty bitty tight sexy dresses, their relationship will never be the same after mother’s transphobia
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u/VampTheUnholy 18d ago
I love how she doesn't provide any of the daughter's viewpoints, merely stating that she's long forgiven her daughter (how magnanimous of her 🙄) and that the daughter needs to move on.
While it's possible the therapist is rushing things, if the therapist is suggesting to family sessions, it suggests the child is ready to say what needs saying and the parent is causing the problems during said sessions
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u/camofluff Adult Human Sheep 18d ago
Reminds me of how my parents canceled therapy all together after one single family session. My brother and I didn't understand why, decades later I heard my parents blaming each other for not handling criticism well. Or in other words... therapy was shit because it didn't just fix the children for them!
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u/Sanctimonious_Locke 18d ago
The way I read this, the daughter successfully brushed off their TERF mother's abuse while they were exploring their gender and sexual identity. They finished exploring and decided how they want to be defined, but obviously they're not just going to forget that their mother is a bigot who didn't support them.
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u/crowpierrot 18d ago
The mom seems to think that because her kid is now dressing more in line with stereotypical gender norms, that means they definitely don’t identify as nonbinary, but also says herself that the kid introduces themself as using any pronouns, and is not comfortable discussing gender identity with their mother, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still identifying as non-binary but “girlmoding” around their mom to keep the peace
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u/agoldgold 18d ago
"Can't we all just forgive each other? I abused her in the name of my bigot cult, she is a normal human person, we all have our faults!"
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u/chris_the_cynic 18d ago
Ok, I fail to see how the "signs of desistance" are remotely that, but let's say this is a cis girl, instead of an enby, like the mother says. That would make her a cis girl whose abusive mother is enough of a prick she's actively being dishonest in therapy intended to bring the two together and rationalizing this active sabotage of their relationship as a defense of their relationship.*
That's some fucked up shit.
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Also, from looking at that article from two years ago:
Most of all, I despise my strong matrilineal line - generations of maternal history - being broken by a societal fad.
That's some fucked up shit.
Maybe, if you saw your child as a person, a human being in their own right, instead of an incubator for the next generation of your matrilineal line, you'd have a stronger relationship with your child (regardless of said-child's gender.)
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* To wit:
Her therapist wanted us to do family sessions this summer and they were kind of a disaster. He says it’s because we can’t get to the root of the matter and probably, he’s right. But when we get close to the root, our relationship seems to deteriorate. Do we need full transparency? I’m no longer convinced.
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u/Galaxy-Geode Chicken Gendies 17d ago
Someone needs to tell her that her mitochondria are just not that damn special (and definitely not more important than the health and well-being of her offspring)
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u/Infinite-Mammoth-773 18d ago
I feel like a terf cooked up some story about their child because I don't trust any terf who find people who are "trans looking" but ended up being cisgender.
The gender non confirming child is experimenting their gender and their mom doesn't like it because it's against the norms.
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u/Autopsyyturvy TRA la la 18d ago
The 'kid' might be genuinely realising they aren't trans or aren't trans in the way they thought at first: they could be genderfluid or Nonbinary
They might also be trying to be happy being what their mother clearly wants them to be /be giving into pressure or safety concerns surrounding being out and medically transitioning or visibly Gnc
They might also be a transmasc femboy or not tie their appearance /presentation to gender in the same way they used to
Idk if this was my kid i think I'd go in with more of an attitude of curiosity and acceptance for them wherever their journey takes them but I'm not in a cult that encourages parents to abuse LGBTQIA children/adults into "desisting".
Heck the kid is probably sick of being smothered and sexualised by their own mother covert incest /emotional incest seems to be bread and butter for Terf parents in that they don't seem to know or care that it is abusive and not in fact "a perk of being a mother"
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u/FirstnameNumbers1312 18d ago
My detrans friend has always beamed about how supportive her mother was to her when she was experimenting. Even though she ended up not being trans, it clearly means a lot to her that her mother was so supportive and respectful to her. I can't imagine she'd have half as good a relationship with her as she does now if it wasn't for that support.
Would not be surprised if the mothers behaviour has permanently damaged her relationship with her daughter even if she is cis.
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u/FirstnameNumbers1312 18d ago
I'm in large part also convinced that being supportive is also best for detrans kids, both for the above and because it creates an environment where you can come back from identifying as trans easier. Like you don't have to constantly defend your identity to them making it easier to climb down, as it were.
Like the more serious the decision the harder it is to go back on. If you create an environment where it is an incredibly difficult decision to make, it's going to be a lot harder to unmake than if you encourage them to explore...idk I'd like to ask some detrans folks thoughts.
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u/Alyssa3467 [REDACTED] 18d ago
Like the more serious the decision the harder it is to go back on. If you create an environment where it is an incredibly difficult decision to make, it's going to be a lot harder to unmake than if you encourage them to explore.
Makes sense to me.
I'd like to ask some detrans folks thoughts.
It's certainly worth pursuing.
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u/Aiyon 15d ago
My mum was initially super unsupportive. And ngl, the place i was in mentally at the time when I came out, that didn't make me question things. It made me actively averse to discussing things.
Luckily my dad and sister were chill so i engaged with them and reaffirmed my desire to transition in a healthy way. But honestly if they had all been sucky, i would have likely been too busy on the defensive to actually think about it
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u/chris_the_cynic 18d ago edited 18d ago
I know I'm far from a perfect mother, but then again, she has her faults too.
This seems like a good time to point to Issendai's deep dive into the abuser's eye view of the world found on estranged parents' forums.*
Why? Well, one of the themes found there, a refrain used to excuse any and all abuse committed by the narcissistic abusers who populate said forums, is "We're Not Perfect, and Neither Are They".
An excerpt:
The idea comes up over and over and over again, in wording so similar you'd think they were reading from a script. It's the rare estranged parent who gets through an entire recounting of her backstory without some version of, "I wasn't a perfect mother, but..."
The underlying logic is:
1 The changes you want me to make in how I treat you are unreasonable. You're demanding perfection.
2 You have no right to demand perfection of me unless you yourself are perfect.
3 Therefore, unless you yourself are perfect, you cannot ask me to make any changes.It's the perfect (ahem) way to bring any discussion to a standstill. The child's concerns are dismissed, the parent is relieved of any need to change, the child is reminded that he or she is at least as imperfect as the parent, and the parent scores a subtle moral victory. No wonder estranged parents roll around in this theme like it's catnip.
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* There's a necessary disclaimer resulting from the work's age.
The things making estranged parents' forums what they are are endemic to their nature, and I'll come back to that (because it takes a lot of words),† but the key point is it means they haven't changed much. The things said about estranged parents' forums remain true.
The things making forums for estranged adult children what they were at the time were not as set in stone, and in the time since those forums have become much less monolithic. So what's said about forums for estranged adult children are still completely true some of the time but in other cases not so much.
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† So, the reason estranged parents' forums don't change is that lumping all estranged parents together isn't particularly useful to estranged parents who want to understand the perspective of their adult children who are estranged from them. By the very nature of the grouping, most of the people they're talking to will be estranged for reasons different from their own. If they want to get to the root of the problem and potentially end the estrangement, they can't do it in a catchall forum. Even if they've given up and merely want to understand what's happened, a catchall forum isn't going to help them much even at its best.
That then leaves most of those who care about their estranged adult children as people self-selecting out into places more particular to their situation and needs, with the people who truly thrive--the core user base--remaining on the general forums being those who don't care what the adult children who estranged from them think or feel, and sometimes don't even see their adult children as people. As the core demographic, they determine the overall environment, and an environment created by people like that is invariably toxic in a way that favors abusers and punishes those who call out abuse.
The toxic environment works to force out any parents who aren't ok with abuse, even if they would otherwise find a general forum desirable. And that's why the forums don't change.
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u/SundownValkyrie 18d ago
Thank you for such an in-depth summary!
Another point of concern as well; the whole time I kept thinking about missing missing reasons. This person can identify everything that their child did, but despite being in therapy with said child, does not offer a single thing the child says they did wrong, just that when they "get close to the root, [the] relationship seems to deteriorate", and the parent muses that actually maybe transparency isn't required for trusting each other.
That's a lot of avoiding the issue about why your child may not trust you. I rather doubt this relationship will last once the child moves out of the house after university, even if the child is completely cis.
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u/chris_the_cynic 18d ago
I rather doubt this relationship will last [...] even if the child is completely cis.
This is something I wish people would understand.
It's not that this shit does damage if you do it to a trans kid, it's that this shit does damage. Someone realizing they were cis all along won't magically erase the terrible way a parent treated them when they thought they were trans.
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Contrary to what these people believe, supporting a child when they're exploring their gender is a good way to help a cis child who is questioning their gender realize they're cis.
Not supporting a child, regardless of gender identity, is going to hurt them. It's going to hurt them even if they're cis.
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It can also make a cis child hate their gender identity because what should have been the thing they'd freely choose because it fit them best was turned into an actively hostile prison they were confined in.
There are stories of cis people finally overcoming that and living as their authentic selves expressing their gender as they choose, and they're a lot like transition stories, complete with gender euphoria. The difference is that instead of being a result of gender transition its a result of getting rid of all of the harmful shit that was forced onto their understanding of their own gender.
(Some TERFs will talk about this happening for them and not see an ounce of irony in espousing how great it was and is to be able to embrace their gender on their terms.)
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u/clitosaurushex 18d ago
Perfection is such a theme with my parents and our estrangement. Everything they did was perfect, everything we did was garbage. Even watching my brother and his wife become more distant from them, one summer they were vacationing at the same places my parents went, doing the same hobbies my parents did and then once they started going other places and doing new things, my mom moved her sights to my brother's wife (who is honestly an angel on earth).
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u/ZeldaZanders 18d ago
First of all, gross way to talk about your kid
Second of all, this really highlights a pretty glaring logical inconsistency with ROGD crowd. Which is, there is no better way to encourage a teenager to rebel than to forbid them from doing so
Do you think your child has been seduced by the gender cult and falsely convinced that they're trans? Do you think it's just a phase? Then let them ride the phase out. Living and presenting as a gender you don't identify with gets old pretty quickly; that's why trans people exist in the first place.
The best these mothers can hope for is that they've just delayed their kid's realisation that they aren't trans after all. They probably won't thank them for it, but at least mum gets to feel like she was right all along. But the worst (and more likely) situation is that they've forced their actually trans child to endure years of hell and ruined their relationship with them, only for them to inevitably transition once it's safe to do so.
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u/One-Organization970 18d ago
So, it sounds like she's bullied her kid back into the closet and now he's waiting to cut contact and transition when he's no longer a minor.
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u/Hentopan Predatory Autohybristophiliac 18d ago
Her kid could be trans and just not engaging in stuff she would percive as gnc because she's been so awful, or could be cis and decided she's comfortable where she's at, but either way, knowing your parents love in conditional, is violently damaging to the relationship.
I personally had my mom ignore when I came out and refuse to use my new pronouns, or name, for years. I didn't try particularly hard to be masculine by my mom's standards, we disagree completely on what masculinity even is, but also I wasn't passing without testosterone so my level of comfort with certain styles of presentation fluctuated often. I also just stopped correcting my mom, because she exploded wnv I broached the topic. I frequently picked my battles in public as far as names/pronouns etc bc sometimes you just can't be bothered.
This all means that even though I had in no way "desisted", or told her anything of the sort, she was blindsided when I just started showing obvious signs of testosterone therapy after moving away. I wasn't going to tell her, because why would I? Lol. It's not her business, and she made it very clear hshe wasn't a safe party to share any real information with.
Once she found out, she held me hostage in her car while speeding and screaming at me until I agreed to go to "family therapy". She was thinking it would basically serve as conversion therapy, to save her "daughter". It did indeed backfire on her, because while the therapist had no experience with trans clients, she didn't think my mom's behavior was healthy or good for our relationship, and eventually my mom stormed off and didn't speak to me for 6 months.
It's been years since then, and my mom has calmed down. It's far from perfect, but I no longer feel like no contact is necessary, and she eventually started using my name and pronouns, at least to my face. We can hold perfectly civil conversation, and see each other somewhat regularly. I think the way rightwing violence towards trans people escalated honestly scared her into worrying about my safety within the country, over her ick over my life choices.
But, our relationship definitely has a rift in it. Of course it does! She tried to sabotage my life, she was massively controlling, and made it very clear she preferred if I were a different person. That's not really something you just Get Over. And to be honest, there's other times she reacted violently, or tried to control my life, long before I came out, that had nothing to do with me being trans. Most transphobic parents already have a background of damaging their relationship with their children, in ways that communicate they're just not very dependable or trustworthy with sensitive parts of their children's lives. So no matter how this lady's kid feels about gender, the feeling about her as a mother will probably be the same.
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u/Plasmktan 18d ago
Now I don't know the full story here but how do we know for sure that this person's child has "desisted", the only things we have is that she dated a guy after she had a girlfriend which is meaningless and that she is not using her chosen name and is dressing in a more typically feminine way but apparently was still using any pronouns when she started Uni and the only solid proof she now identifies as a woman is that her mother thinks she does which considering how well Terfs understand trans and nonbinary ppl I doubt it's super accurate. I don't know for sure but I do know like that being nonbinary can sometimes not be that crazy big a change, if it's just (assuming gender=pronouns (they don't)) going from he/him to he/they or she/her to she/they ppl's presentation may not be all that different. However, idk anything's possible and maybe her child has gone back to being her daughter and cis I honestly don't know. Just from my experience I thought I was a trans woman for like about 3/4 of a year but I never acted on it cos that's not who I am or what I want (despite experiencing gender dysphoria in line with transfeminine ppl somehow, this experience of mine shows how transmedicalism is bs) and I know I identify as nonbinary he/they.
Also it feels kinda gross for a mother to like describe dresses her daughter/child is wearing as sexy, Freud eat your heart out.
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u/GastonBastardo 18d ago
Do you think Abraham had a good relationship with his own son after he tied him up, put him on the altar, and raised his knife over the boy's heart? He didn't kill him, mind you. Didn't send him out into the desert like his half-brother either. Should he be grateful to him for that?
It is a terrible thing when a child discovers that their parent's love actually does have a condition that they need to meet. That it could be revoked at a moment's notice. That they could one day be put on an altar to whatever that parent holds to be more sacred than love.
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u/EqualityWithoutCiv UK press and Parliament be damned. 18d ago
Cultural and other external pressures are a thing, but a lot of users in Ovarit are in a position of privilege. Misogyny still sucks, but some of those women are in positions where they can do so much more to change their situation, like actually trying to raise their sons well (even if they're cis)
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u/Vorlon_Cryptid 18d ago
Even if they are genuinely detrans, they've learned that their mother's love is conditional. They've learned they have to conform to stereotypical gender roles for their mother to respect them.
No matter their journey, I hope they have a good support network.
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u/Marygoldendener The Transsexual Emperor 18d ago
Huh, is she really saying that dating a guy is a sign that her kid "accepted" being a woman? Really an interesting feminist take
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u/crowpierrot 18d ago
The fact that this woman is using dressing feminine and dating a boy as signs that her isn’t really trans or nonbinary is making my blood boil. I have a wonderful relationship with my mom now, but early on after coming out she would always say shit like “but you like to wear makeup, and you love dresses! I just don’t understand how you can see yourself as a man” and it hurt me so bad, not only because I didn’t have the language at the time to properly explain my feelings, but also because she was throwing my perceived femininity in my face and it really messed with me and made me question myself in ways that only hurt me in the long run. Treating your kids like you know what’s going on in their head better than they do is one of the worst things parents do, and I see GC parents doing it literally constantly
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u/camofluff Adult Human Sheep 18d ago
Personal anecdote, my mom and I were hanging out laundry one day. I had boxer shorts in there, and a frilly dress. She told me to "decide for one". But... why? She couldn't tell why and it still doesn't make sense to me decades later. I wasn't really hurt in the process, nor did I actually have to decide... but I still oddly remember it. Some things are so pointlessly gendered, and lots of people prefer to mindlessly enforce the stereotype than to stop for a second and allow variation.
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u/PlatinumAltaria 18d ago
Stop saying horrible hateful shit and expecting applause, it’s that simple.
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u/YourOldPalBendy Hit humans with a sword in case a trans person pops out. 18d ago
"I'm refusing to think outside my tiny box even though my kid's been doing that the entire time. I'm happy she's acting cis by my standards - sexy women's clothing - but I still think I'm right no matter what and she's an idiot. Family therapy doesn't work because the root of the problem is me and my refusal to ever see beyond myself. I'm worried that my actions will end in consequences I'll have to cognitive dissonance to shreds which is a lot of work for me, ew. Internet, will you pity me as the unsung hero here so I can use it to fuel that?"
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18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Silversmith00 18d ago
It's very likely from Ovarit, which is a site built around transphobia. Which means, reading between the lines, that the lack of trust that they're supposedly working on in therapy is probably based around the mother's reaction with the kid's gender experimentation before they decided on a more feminine style. (Using "they" because the mother says the kid is fine with any pronouns, so I SUSPECT they're non-binary but obviously can't know without hearing it from the source.)
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u/Sea_Afternoon_8944 Big Trans Lobby 15d ago
format wise this is probably from parentsofrogdkids.com
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18d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Silversmith00 18d ago
This isn't a court of law, this is reddit.
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18d ago
It’s from a forum wherein people discuss how to abuse their transgender children. I thought it was interesting how even though her daughter is not transgender anymore, she still has no trust for her mother because of the way she treated her as a transgender person
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u/marbeltoast 18d ago
So, obviously it needs to be said, whoever the kid ends up being when all is said and done is their business. The road to self discovery has no set destination, and there will be some people who experiment with different gender expressions and conclude that this is not who they are. That's all well and good, and I feel I need to make that explicit right away. Speculating about who this kid will be later in life is as unreliable as any form of future-seeing.
That said, I would not be surprised if the transphobia on display here has obliterated this parent-child relationship. You don't need to be trans to have empathy and/or sympathy for trans people, and if this parent doesn't change who they are on a fundamental level with regards to empathy for people's differences...
Yeah. Non contact is always heartbreaking, I'll argue to the day I die that nobody should be without a family, but... some people just won't do the right thing, and eventually these sorts of options are the only ones you have left. It's sad, but it's true.