How do you love a son who continues to refer to himself as your daughter?
After almost no contact from our son for about three years, he recently reached out to my husband. He misses his family and he’s asking us again to affirm him so we can have some kind of relationship. It sounds like relationship at any cost, our cost, not his. His terms. Only his terms. He asks why we can’t belong to one of those churches who affirm trans people. (Because we cannot worship a false god, my son.)
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Could I have lunch with him while looking at the harm he’s done to himself and manage to behave normally, choke back tears, eat one bite? Could I listen to his fake feminine voice when I remember so well the musical bass voice that could sing beautifully and mimic accents that kept me laughing for hours? Is that love….sitting across the table, policing my speech, hiding my heartbreak? Is there a way to love a son who is desperate for relationship yet will not concede that he’ll never be a woman? Is there a way to have a conversation with my son without fearing legal consequences because I used the name we gave him and the matching pronouns?
What does love look like? Currently, love doesn’t look like a visit home as we cannot risk his attempts at discipling his younger brothers or his niece in his new religion.
13 comments
If you ever actually loved you would know the answer to that question. But you didn’t love anyone, you had a plan and conditions for that plan. You had a sense of ownership over another being as a part of that plan and thus obligated to your conditions. You don’t see someone you gave birth to and tried to prepare for her own decisions happy for herself you see harm to the property you had plans for. You see a threat to the cult of you in a dangerous sense of self. What happens when brothers and niece displease you by finding a religion you don’t recognize any more than the sense of self you scoff at your daughter for having insulting it as a religion? What happens when they have jobs, spouses, a decision on how to raise their own families you disapprove of? The only one at “risk” here is you, and it’s the risk of everyone seeing your true colours and deciding not to harm themselves just to appease you.
How do you love a son who continues to refer to himself as your daughter?
Unconditionally. NEXT!
“How do you love a son who continues to refer to himself as your daughter?”
"It sounds like relationship at any cost, our cost, not his. His terms.”
"What does love look like?”
How do you love a son who continues to refer to himself as your daughter?
My childhood best friend, Laura, had one of the most horrific diseases that one can have: Tay Sachs. Tay Sachs is a genetic disorder that makes it so the body cannot digest fats. And it’s not just like it caused an upset stomach or something, the body literally does not know what to do with fats so it starts getting deposited in random places where it doesn’t belong, like in the brain. The most common version is juvenile Tay Sachs and most children who have it don’t live to their first birthday. Laura had what’s referred to as ‘adult onset Tay Sachs’ which means the symptoms started around the time she was 4. At the time she showed significant neurological symptoms that something was really wrong. Her parents took her to get a CAT scan and it showed a large mass in her brain. Initially they thought it was a tumor but later on through more investigation they discovered that it was a big mass of fat. It was then that everyone realized she did not have cancer, but something just as horrible.
Laura lived to be 27 and by the time she passed away she couldn’t move, see, hear, or speak. It’s a truly horrific thing to have to witness but I still am incredibly thankful for the time I had with her because she was a wonderful person. I will miss her forever. As for her family, this was a beyond horrific experience and they would do anything if it meant they could have her back and just healthy. They would have loved it if she was trans instead of having this awful disorder.
You have a child who is still alive, who hopefully will be around for a long time, and seems to want to have a relationship with you, but here you are whining about how they aren’t exactly how you expected them to be. How do you love a daughter regardless of what kind of body she is in? Unconditionally as others have said. If you did love her unconditionally you wouldn’t even have to ask this ridiculous question. It shouldn’t matter what gender your kid is, you should love them the same regardless but here you are acting like she is a child abuser or something.
All of this says nothing about your child and everything about you.
I can't think of a single person in my life whose identity I would question. There's just literally no point. If my sister woke up tomorrow and told me to start addressing her using he/him pronouns, I'd just have a brother instead. What else would need to change?
Nothing about my new brother's self-expression would be "fake", it would just be how he expresses himself. Everyone does that differently anyways. Who am I to suggest one expression is honest, another fraudulent?
@Passerby #263744
Thank you Sir for pretty much encompassing the whole pittyparty people. It is ALWAYS about “damaging the property” with them, their children are never seen as actual human beings, merely extensions of theirs.
It sounds like relationship at any cost, our cost, not his. His terms. Only his terms.
It sounds like you see your daughter as an opponent, an adversary, not as a beloved member of your family. You're more concerned about your own perceived status with this child than about her desire for love and belonging. You think if you agree to her "terms", it makes her the strong winner and you a weak loser, so you automatically reject any attempt at reconciliation.
I can only imagine the message you're sending to your sons and your niece: Either live exactly as Mom/Auntie dictates or she'll kick you out of the family, because she only loves you if she stays in control.
@Yutolia #263759
What a horrible tragedy. It certainly puts PITT pathology into perspective. My sympathies to your friend and her family.
@Sasha #263791
Yeah, it really does, doesn’t it? These parents could have relationships with their kids if they would just choose to not be bigoted assholes, and so many of them keep choosing to be assholes because, as you said, they see their own kid as an opponent. This shit just infuriates me.
It sounds like relationship at any cost, our cost, not his. His terms.
Whereas you only want a relationship at her cost, on your terms. Because unconditional love is a foreign concept to you and everyone else on PITT.
On another note, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if any PITT parents tried to "get their child back from the trans" through abuse of some kind.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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