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scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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…
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I mean… It’s a feeling. Dysphoria is a complex thing, it’s not as clear cut as, let’s skip right to surgery.
healthline.com/…/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.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.”
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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:
a trans person’s certainty about their body is more important than my doubts about their mental state
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.