Confused about all the gender bending

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I'm struggling with is what to do about sleepovers now that my tween has come out as pansexual, along with the friends she wants to do the sleepovers with. I wouldn't let her spend the night with a boy if she were straight, so what now?

Oh that is a really good question. I would love to see responses from gender-affirming parents. It seems to me like yeah, no sleepovers, but I’m not sure.

My DD came out in MS. She has sleepovers where I deeply trust the parents. The gender of the friend doesn’t matter. I worry more about alcohol/drugs, guns, and shady/unstable parents more than sexual experimentation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I'm struggling with is what to do about sleepovers now that my tween has come out as pansexual, along with the friends she wants to do the sleepovers with. I wouldn't let her spend the night with a boy if she were straight, so what now?

No more sleepovers. Sleepovers were always super questionable anyway.

As a lesbian who grew up in the 80s and crushed on many a CIS female friend who was what we called then "bi-curious", I agree with this.

Sleepovers are difficult and pressured and can become a 'twilight zone' where you feel safe -- until the next morning, when your supposedly consensual "curious" friend suddenly decides to tell the world you sexually harassed her. Or something.

I know -- I'm a bit triggered. But it's pretty easy to tell a 13 year old that you're not hosting any sleepovers. It doesn't take away all opportunities, but it may come as a relief.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pan/Omni is about sexual orientation. This generation of kids is in a much safer space to express where on that scale they fall then we were. My 12 year old is a Lesbian and it is no phase. To say that 12 yr olds don't know what they are attracted to is just wrong. I knew well before 12 that I was attracted to males. Why would it be any different for someone attracted to their same gender or any gender?

As for the gendered expectations comments. Yes women have less gendered expectations but don't ignore that they are still very there. Have you read any thread on here about what makes a woman attractive or how to get a guy? And boys have that even worse. We still have a lot of work to do on this front as a society.

Just be open, accepting and listen.

+1. I wonder if people who think it's weird for 12 year olds to know who they're attracted to remember what their childhoods were like? Maybe they were just later developers. I knew I was attracted to women by fifth grade. These aren't unusual times to have developed an idea of who you're in to.

I don’t think it’s weird at all for any particular 12 year old to know who they’re attracted to. What I do think is weird is when a group of 6 friends from elementary school, who have all had crushes on boys and followed fairly standard gender norms as far as clothing, hit puberty and seemingly overnight 5 out of 6 of them identify as LGBTQ+ (using labels they saw on Tik Tok or something and have to Google themselves to make sure they know what they mean.) Seriously, if you haven’t spent time around adolescent girls lately, I’m not sure you understand what’s happening on a large scale.

This! The same situation is happening in my DD teen group. Statistically, it’s impossible that they are all LGBTQ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls like attention and claiming to be different in a fundamental way, especially a socially acceptable one for the time period, is a GREAT way to get attention and kudos in your social circles. In the 90s, a WHOLE bunch of girls claimed to be "depressed and suicidal" a la Kurt Cobain and would walk around literally talking all day about how sad and depressed they were. Magically this mostly went away in the 2000s when it was no longer en vogue to act like a crazy suicidal person. Bisexual was all the rage in the 2000s and all the girls were flaunting that they kissed their best female friend or whatever. Now it's parasexual transfluid whatever. I have no doubt that some people are literally gender nonconforming for valid biological or psychological reasons but I guarantee you 95% of these girls are just attention seeking. I have a colleague whose daughter claimed to start living her life as a man when she was 13, changed her name and everything. By 17 she was done with it. "just a phase bro"

+1 For many of these girls, it is just a phase. I don't see any harm in it... just continue to be supportive and loving. As an interesting side note, from my experience as a high school teacher in FCPS (so I've taught about 2200 students over the past 15 years), most of these girls are white. FWIW, our school population is about 30-35% white. This also makes me think it is a trend rather than truly biological or psychological.

Couldn't it also be that gender nonconformity has more of a stigma generally among nonwhites?

For sure! But I see a lot of freshman girls enter high school as LGBTQ+ and then graduate as mostly cis-gendered heterosexual females. And again, I just encourage all parents to be loving and supportive as students explore their sexuality.

+2 I also want to suggest, though, that we see lots of kids enter high school as "jocks" or "goths" or "theater nerds" and graduate as some other identity/presentation entirely. If you give your child room to explore, they will eventually figure out which identity actually fits.

And so many enter HS cis-gendered but graduate and move on and are LGBTQ+ for the rest of their lives.

Yes, that does happen as well. But there are certainly fewer of those cases.

Are you kidding?!? There are way more students out as queer of some type senior year or first year of college than freshman year of HS.

Sigh. It seems like you are not around a lot of tween/early teen girls in the DC area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pan/Omni is about sexual orientation. This generation of kids is in a much safer space to express where on that scale they fall then we were. My 12 year old is a Lesbian and it is no phase. To say that 12 yr olds don't know what they are attracted to is just wrong. I knew well before 12 that I was attracted to males. Why would it be any different for someone attracted to their same gender or any gender?

As for the gendered expectations comments. Yes women have less gendered expectations but don't ignore that they are still very there. Have you read any thread on here about what makes a woman attractive or how to get a guy? And boys have that even worse. We still have a lot of work to do on this front as a society.

Just be open, accepting and listen.

+1. I wonder if people who think it's weird for 12 year olds to know who they're attracted to remember what their childhoods were like? Maybe they were just later developers. I knew I was attracted to women by fifth grade. These aren't unusual times to have developed an idea of who you're in to.

I don’t think it’s weird at all for any particular 12 year old to know who they’re attracted to. What I do think is weird is when a group of 6 friends from elementary school, who have all had crushes on boys and followed fairly standard gender norms as far as clothing, hit puberty and seemingly overnight 5 out of 6 of them identify as LGBTQ+ (using labels they saw on Tik Tok or something and have to Google themselves to make sure they know what they mean.) Seriously, if you haven’t spent time around adolescent girls lately, I’m not sure you understand what’s happening on a large scale.

This! The same situation is happening in my DD teen group. Statistically, it’s impossible that they are all LGBTQ

That isn't how statistics work. I know a middle school class of 20 from the 90s that produced two trans men. That's not very likely and yet it happened, because improbable things can still happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer?

Just let her be and don't worry too much about it. She'll figure it out. Support her when she needs support. Don't stress if she changes course, in any direction. Listen to her when she talks.

That's it.

Disagree. She is a child and needs help and guidance. The last thing I would do is leave her alone to figure this out, under the influence of LGBTQ sites on the internet

Then send her to a counselor that understands LGBTQ... but don't leave it to a parent that thinks there is only XX and XY.

Do hear what you're saying? "Send her to a counselor but don't leave it to a parent?" Straight out of the reform playbook. No thank you. Her parents have every right to guide this as they see fit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer?

Just let her be and don't worry too much about it. She'll figure it out. Support her when she needs support. Don't stress if she changes course, in any direction. Listen to her when she talks.

That's it.

Disagree. She is a child and needs help and guidance. The last thing I would do is leave her alone to figure this out, under the influence of LGBTQ sites on the internet

Then send her to a counselor that understands LGBTQ... but don't leave it to a parent that thinks there is only XX and XY.

Do hear what you're saying? "Send her to a counselor but don't leave it to a parent?" Straight out of the reform playbook. No thank you. Her parents have every right to guide this as they see fit.

+1

Start with love. End with truth.

[Anonymous]

They are just trying to be trendy and rebel in some way. This too will pass.

[Anonymous]

And, yes, once kids start getting this sexual--no more sleepovers with anyone of any sex / gender. Unfortunately, one of the consequences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls like attention and claiming to be different in a fundamental way, especially a socially acceptable one for the time period, is a GREAT way to get attention and kudos in your social circles. In the 90s, a WHOLE bunch of girls claimed to be "depressed and suicidal" a la Kurt Cobain and would walk around literally talking all day about how sad and depressed they were. Magically this mostly went away in the 2000s when it was no longer en vogue to act like a crazy suicidal person. Bisexual was all the rage in the 2000s and all the girls were flaunting that they kissed their best female friend or whatever. Now it's parasexual transfluid whatever. I have no doubt that some people are literally gender nonconforming for valid biological or psychological reasons but I guarantee you 95% of these girls are just attention seeking. I have a colleague whose daughter claimed to start living her life as a man when she was 13, changed her name and everything. By 17 she was done with it. "just a phase bro"

+1 For many of these girls, it is just a phase. I don't see any harm in it... just continue to be supportive and loving. As an interesting side note, from my experience as a high school teacher in FCPS (so I've taught about 2200 students over the past 15 years), most of these girls are white. FWIW, our school population is about 30-35% white. This also makes me think it is a trend rather than truly biological or psychological.

Couldn't it also be that gender nonconformity has more of a stigma generally among nonwhites?

For sure! But I see a lot of freshman girls enter high school as LGBTQ+ and then graduate as mostly cis-gendered heterosexual females. And again, I just encourage all parents to be loving and supportive as students explore their sexuality.

+2 I also want to suggest, though, that we see lots of kids enter high school as "jocks" or "goths" or "theater nerds" and graduate as some other identity/presentation entirely. If you give your child room to explore, they will eventually figure out which identity actually fits.

And so many enter HS cis-gendered but graduate and move on and are LGBTQ+ for the rest of their lives.

Yes, that does happen as well. But there are certainly fewer of those cases.

Are you kidding?!? There are way more students out as queer of some type senior year or first year of college than freshman year of HS.

Sigh. It seems like you are not around a lot of tween/early teen girls in the DC area.

I’m a parent and a teacher in this area. Maybe it’s because one of my kids is gay, but I can tell you that there are more out kids at 17/18 than 14/15.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pan/Omni is about sexual orientation. This generation of kids is in a much safer space to express where on that scale they fall then we were. My 12 year old is a Lesbian and it is no phase. To say that 12 yr olds don't know what they are attracted to is just wrong. I knew well before 12 that I was attracted to males. Why would it be any different for someone attracted to their same gender or any gender?

As for the gendered expectations comments. Yes women have less gendered expectations but don't ignore that they are still very there. Have you read any thread on here about what makes a woman attractive or how to get a guy? And boys have that even worse. We still have a lot of work to do on this front as a society.

Just be open, accepting and listen.

+1. I wonder if people who think it's weird for 12 year olds to know who they're attracted to remember what their childhoods were like? Maybe they were just later developers. I knew I was attracted to women by fifth grade. These aren't unusual times to have developed an idea of who you're in to.

I don’t think it’s weird at all for any particular 12 year old to know who they’re attracted to. What I do think is weird is when a group of 6 friends from elementary school, who have all had crushes on boys and followed fairly standard gender norms as far as clothing, hit puberty and seemingly overnight 5 out of 6 of them identify as LGBTQ+ (using labels they saw on Tik Tok or something and have to Google themselves to make sure they know what they mean.) Seriously, if you haven’t spent time around adolescent girls lately, I’m not sure you understand what’s happening on a large scale.

This! The same situation is happening in my DD teen group. Statistically, it’s impossible that they are all LGBTQ

There’s a chance that at least some of your kids are cis/het, but trolling you because they know you get so triggered over it. Same way that a big group girls at my prep school dated working class Black guys in HS, but all but one of them married a white guy from their same SES.

My DD is gay and she knows that we don’t care who she loves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parent of a trans female child here.

Having seen thread titles like this in the past, I steeled myself before reading because I’m often so disheartened by the comments/replies.

I have to say, I am near tears seeing all the supportive “live and let live” comments here, both with respect to gender and sexuality. Thank you, DCUM peeps.

As a parent of two cis-gender children, I spend a lot of time trying to debunk misinformation on these types of threads because I don’t think it should be left to families of trans kids to bear this burden. But even I get exhausted/depressed by it; I can only imagine what seeing the ignorance and hate on some of these threads must mean for you. I’m so sorry about that but am glad that this thread is proving more thoughtful. Wishing you and your child all the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pan/Omni is about sexual orientation. This generation of kids is in a much safer space to express where on that scale they fall then we were. My 12 year old is a Lesbian and it is no phase. To say that 12 yr olds don't know what they are attracted to is just wrong. I knew well before 12 that I was attracted to males. Why would it be any different for someone attracted to their same gender or any gender?

As for the gendered expectations comments. Yes women have less gendered expectations but don't ignore that they are still very there. Have you read any thread on here about what makes a woman attractive or how to get a guy? And boys have that even worse. We still have a lot of work to do on this front as a society.

Just be open, accepting and listen.

+1. I wonder if people who think it's weird for 12 year olds to know who they're attracted to remember what their childhoods were like? Maybe they were just later developers. I knew I was attracted to women by fifth grade. These aren't unusual times to have developed an idea of who you're in to.

I don’t think it’s weird at all for any particular 12 year old to know who they’re attracted to. What I do think is weird is when a group of 6 friends from elementary school, who have all had crushes on boys and followed fairly standard gender norms as far as clothing, hit puberty and seemingly overnight 5 out of 6 of them identify as LGBTQ+ (using labels they saw on Tik Tok or something and have to Google themselves to make sure they know what they mean.) Seriously, if you haven’t spent time around adolescent girls lately, I’m not sure you understand what’s happening on a large scale.

This! The same situation is happening in my DD teen group. Statistically, it’s impossible that they are all LGBTQ

That’s not how statistics work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls like attention and claiming to be different in a fundamental way, especially a socially acceptable one for the time period, is a GREAT way to get attention and kudos in your social circles. In the 90s, a WHOLE bunch of girls claimed to be "depressed and suicidal" a la Kurt Cobain and would walk around literally talking all day about how sad and depressed they were. Magically this mostly went away in the 2000s when it was no longer en vogue to act like a crazy suicidal person. Bisexual was all the rage in the 2000s and all the girls were flaunting that they kissed their best female friend or whatever. Now it's parasexual transfluid whatever. I have no doubt that some people are literally gender nonconforming for valid biological or psychological reasons but I guarantee you 95% of these girls are just attention seeking. I have a colleague whose daughter claimed to start living her life as a man when she was 13, changed her name and everything. By 17 she was done with it. "just a phase bro"

+1 For many of these girls, it is just a phase. I don't see any harm in it... just continue to be supportive and loving. As an interesting side note, from my experience as a high school teacher in FCPS (so I've taught about 2200 students over the past 15 years), most of these girls are white. FWIW, our school population is about 30-35% white. This also makes me think it is a trend rather than truly biological or psychological.

Couldn't it also be that gender nonconformity has more of a stigma generally among nonwhites?

For sure! But I see a lot of freshman girls enter high school as LGBTQ+ and then graduate as mostly cis-gendered heterosexual females. And again, I just encourage all parents to be loving and supportive as students explore their sexuality.

+2 I also want to suggest, though, that we see lots of kids enter high school as "jocks" or "goths" or "theater nerds" and graduate as some other identity/presentation entirely. If you give your child room to explore, they will eventually figure out which identity actually fits.

And so many enter HS cis-gendered but graduate and move on and are LGBTQ+ for the rest of their lives.

Yes, that does happen as well. But there are certainly fewer of those cases.

Are you kidding?!? There are way more students out as queer of some type senior year or first year of college than freshman year of HS.

Sigh. It seems like you are not around a lot of tween/early teen girls in the DC area.

Sigh. It seems like you are obsessed with the very few girls who are bi, date girls early then settle on dating boys.

[Anonymous]

A lot of it is performative, yes.

Some of it is genuine.

Just go with the flow.