Really striking how willing the GC movement is to encourage adult human beings to describe a literal child as a "young autogynephile" because they were AMAB and liked to wear dresses.

This is a fascinating object lesson in proprietorial parenting. Woman's afab child identifies as lesbian (mum says "great, no unexpected pregnancy!") But thinks it's "just a phase". Goes to LGBT club and comes away wanting to use a different gender neutral name (mum says no way).

And this whole thing develops where mum basically just refused to engage with child's queerness at all. Continues to say she believes child's lesbianism and later transness were "just a phase". Plus a bunch of absent father psychology and crap.

She presents herself as totally liberal but it seems pretty obvious that there's no place for the lesbian or trans child there. Mum then blamed internalised misogyny but there's no real explanation of it.

One of my reasons for being deeply skeptically of ROGD narratives is that I literally went through every phase of this as a teenager, from the other side. Nowadays I'm a broadly happy trans person. Every single part of the narrative is defined by controlling parenting.

So much of it (whether the story of the child in questions ends up in "tragic detransition", or it ends up with "stolen forever from me by the trans cult") is just control narratives, and offence at the child becoming independent and horror about their independent choices.

Just to clarify:
- 4yo I'm told off for trying to wear the "wrong" costumes in dressing up in kindie (during the 80s when GCs claim gender bending was so acceptable)
- 5-6 years old I'm told off by nuns at school for letting boys hit me and not fighting back (I say I don't..

..think it'll make them less angry and stop hitting me, I'm disinterested in whatever rivalry they're trying to engage in, I get beat a lot)
- 6-8, I struggle to integrate at school, I try to make friends with girls but it's not socially acceptable. I can't and don't have much..

..interest making friends with boys at school.
- 8-11 I'm better at making friends of both sexes eventually. I get really into bracelet making
- 11 onwards puberty hits which I struggle intensely with. I've never been restricted at home around gender and things hadn't clicked..

[Sui]
..for me how wildly wrong being male felt, my affinity for trying to fit in with girls at school becomes an "oh shit I'm trans" thing.
- 12 I try to hang myself in the toilet at school & am caught and stopped by another kid. He keeps quiet, I'm deeply ashamed & cover it up.

- I gradually get more depressed, I continue to struggle with making friends due in part to gender issues, but having become more conscious about it I start researching online and become more buried in virtual stuff. I find trans advice online.

- I pluck up the courage to reach out to mermaids around age 15 (around 1998) finally for help in talking to my parents. They dismiss me as they're a charity for parents dealing with trans kids not the other way round.

- I find unofficial trans youth groups online that year, I find the courage to talk to my mum about it, about the fact I'm scared that it's going to destroy me if I can't transition. My mum takes it hard. She's never guessed. I seemed so happy being a boy. I was always so..

..interested in science and other boy like things, "maybe [I'm] mistaken because [I'm] socially awkward". My mother blames herself. My mother is terrified that others will blame her for not masculinising me enough. Maybe she read those baby books with me too much. Maybe she..

..shouldn't have taught me to knit. And in any case, what am I going to do about babies? (I break down crying, I've wanted to be a mum since reading baby books as a kid about my younger siblings). Anyway, it's all too sudden. I've been online too much. She cuts off my internet.

- she takes me to a psychologist who recommends I get more life experience which is fair, but she dismisses as useless. I think she's frustrated he couldn't offer any way to fix me.
- she mounts a series of bedroom raids for the next year.

[SH]
- my access to the internet is also cut off for several months cutting off the support I was using. I can't cope and start self harming and am hospitalised about 3 times for self destructive incidents that end up being unmanageable at home. I've got a few big scars now.

- I learn to hide being trans, I acquire clothes and hide them, I go out wearing makeup, change at friends houses. A male friend who wears makeup and shares an interest in radical feminist texts is basically my support network for a while.

- By 17, I still can't cope, it still feels like it's going to destroy me. I've learned a lot of tech skills and am able to find my way online whether my parents like it or not even without cash in the dialup age.
- I come out to my dad (who my mum had told me would react badly).

- my dad is broadly supportive. I learn my dad had a crossdressing boyfriend back in the earlier 80s before he met my mum. She shames him about this, and may have been encouraging me to fear his response for different reasons.
- again she acts like this is sudden news to her.

Again, at 17, my access to the internet is curtailed as a damaging influence on me, as a threat to me psychologically despite it being the only place I can find other people like me. The fact I've already been through this once at 15 is covered up.

- By now I'm doing my A levels in a girls school because they're the only comprehensive locally that does double maths. This is blamed as a cause rather than effect. I'm finally in an environment where mostly I have a bunch of friends at school. I wear skirts to school most days.

- I do get the shit kicked out of me constantly. My mum tries to argue it's my fault for the way I'm dressing in public.
- around this point the narrative that I'm attention seeking appears. I'm transing because I get validation for it. Walking to/from school is violent, but...

.. there are a few girls at school who support me or don't care about me being trans enough to be friendly at least which I guess constitutes some sort of reward in the eyes of cis adults horrified that I'm so fucking gender bent.

My dad ends up getting in on this too because he's from the same boomer generation of "even in the 80s this was just all larks why can't you keep it to yourself" kind of shit and doesn't understand that I'm just trans and can't cope and having people attack me isn't a choice.

- I go to university. At this point with my mum having pulled the "not under my roof" thing and forced me to hide my different clothes, etc from her bedroom raids, I just don't look back. I spend my student loan on a gender shrink appointment, I starve, I lose weight.

- I come back having changed my name about a year later, and now my new partner is being blamed for me being trans. I have undergone a third cycle if the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria narrative and I'm only 20 years old.

- Again, noone guessed I had a problem with gender. All those hospital trips for self mutilation that have finally started to abate since transition must have been completely unrelated. My mental health slowly starts getting better though.

As life goes on from there onwards, my relationship with my parents has been damaged, but repairs a bit. My mum moved to a different country with my siblings but tries to keep in touch a bit. We're on good terms now. She understands it's not her fault and I'm not in her control.

Every aspect of ROGD has come up, repeatedly:
- it's so sudden
- internet and support groups did it
- this was done to me rather than being an expression of something that is a part of me
- but I was so happy with being what I was
...

I just wanted to write that so people understand what is going on the other side, the degree is epistemological erasure of the child as an agent in their own life with desires, fears, pain of their own.

Even if I hadn't been trans in the end, this wouldn't have been good for me.

Also I refer a lot to my mother and want to clarify, it's not that I blame her for it. My dad was frequently absent and mostly uninvolved. Which again, that could be blamed, probably was by some people in my life. I don't blame my mum for struggling to deal with parenting alone.

Coming back to this, there's a degree to which gender bent kids identifying as gay or lesbian is a relief to transphobic parents. It was certainly the case with my mum (who tried repeatedly to set me up with gay guys who weren't interested) https://twitter.com/Chican3ry/status/1297836891673448448?s=19

Also just to clarify, as an adult trans person I don't wear skirts or makeup unless it's a really formal occasion and rarely wear dresses. It's not about the skirts or the makeup. Yes clearly in a more accepting society I could have worn both anyway.

When I was a teen dressing that way was symbolic, about communicating something about my inner self experience outwardly, in a way I have to make much less effort about after transition, thankfully. And that's the bit of this GCs really don't like.

Regular readers will have noticed that I've completely abandoned the "are trans women women" thing, but part of that is practically, I use a female name, look (according to other people) "a bit dykey maybe, but a woman", and how I am fine with that, fuck the philosophical shit.

There are layers to how gender operates psychologically and socially that I don't think cis people will ever understand that we're put through analysing by being forced outside of it.

Also this is a relatively "classic" Transsexual narrative but that isn't the only way that people come to realise they're trans. It's just how my story went. And I guess I'm trying to point out in the face of trans-hostile parenting it can be shaped into an ROGD narrative when..

..a shy nerdy child who's scared of coming out and potential repercussions like being thrown out of the family home ends up holding on until they can't cope.

Final addition because I'm getting comforting DMs now from ppl about the traumatic content in this thread:

I'm fine. I'm mid thirties, much of it is very much in the past, I have my own family, adopted kids, a good life and a career. Transphobia sucks but my life is not tragic.

The point of this thread wasn't to garner sympathy for my situation, I had a very tough time growing up, but I am now a proper grown up tran and doing alright.

The point was to illustrate how a lot of the difficulties can be invisible especially under hostile conditions.