Confusion about a family member's gender identity -- no hate please
This is a personal question . Any hateful comments will be deleted! I would love insights from any of your experiences.
A young family member, now almost 30, has gone from being a gentle boy who liked his hair long, to "non-binary" to "trans-feminine". There has been no mention of wanting hormone treatment or surgery, and no name change, but frequent statements like "I am not a man".
This bothers me for a number of reasons but I think the main one is that I see this person as very much like me -- and I would never claim not to be a man. We are both gentle people with long hair, and fairly high-pitched voices, who enjoy wearing flowing clothing. To me it has been very important that the spectrum of manhood includes men like us. I feel like people similar to me who decide they are not men, are leaving manhood to rougher types, and narrowing everyone's possibilities.
The other personal bother is that I can search deeply within myself and I do not have a gender identity. Being a man is simply the hand that nature dealt me through my anatomy. I highly doubt whether most people have any strong sense of gender apart from their body, and I fear that this young person and many others are being carried along on a social trend that tells them they are supposed to have a gender identity regardless of what their body is like.
I have been and will continue to be supportive of this young person, but this place lets me share these worries!
Your thoughts? :)
A young family member, now almost 30, has gone from being a gentle boy who liked his hair long, to "non-binary" to "trans-feminine". There has been no mention of wanting hormone treatment or surgery, and no name change, but frequent statements like "I am not a man".
This bothers me for a number of reasons but I think the main one is that I see this person as very much like me -- and I would never claim not to be a man. We are both gentle people with long hair, and fairly high-pitched voices, who enjoy wearing flowing clothing. To me it has been very important that the spectrum of manhood includes men like us. I feel like people similar to me who decide they are not men, are leaving manhood to rougher types, and narrowing everyone's possibilities.
The other personal bother is that I can search deeply within myself and I do not have a gender identity. Being a man is simply the hand that nature dealt me through my anatomy. I highly doubt whether most people have any strong sense of gender apart from their body, and I fear that this young person and many others are being carried along on a social trend that tells them they are supposed to have a gender identity regardless of what their body is like.
I have been and will continue to be supportive of this young person, but this place lets me share these worries!
Your thoughts? :)
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