Beyond the Loneliness of Family Members

Beyond Trans groups for family members offer understanding and solidarity

When I was a little girl, we were the ‘weird family’ in our little town. I know this now from the clues I picked up at the time and the discovery, years later, that my father was walking around at night dressed as a woman and going into our local pub. My friend next door never came into our house. His family moved away at the beginning of the summer holidays, and I played mostly alone all summer. When the new term started, I discovered that they had only moved a few streets away and we weren’t friends anymore. There were lots of instances like this, but, as a child, I didn’t understand what was happening. There’s something odd about you, something wrong, but no one articulates it, and you don’t understand why people look at you like that.

Now, at the age of 55, I am pondering whether to attend my uncle’s funeral. One issue is that I am from the ‘weird’ part of my own wider family. No one asks after my father. Everyone knows. Even though it’s been nine years since I last saw my father, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen him since I was 18, his transgender identity still impacts my life.

Half a century of feelings, a sense of otherness, of secrecy and shame, of being tainted somehow by my father’s transgender identity. Talking about it as an adult to new acquaintances is always awkward, but at some point, you have to decide if this person should be told. Sometimes it feels necessary to tell people you care about, if just to explain why you are… the way you are, but once said, you can’t ever take that revelation back. Talking about it has its consequences, but so does putting all these feelings in a box and trying to forget they exist.

I can’t tell you the relief it felt to meet a woman who had gone through something similar to me – you wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone, but there is a joy in being known and seen and understood. For someone to say, ‘That happened to me, too.’ The thing that had tortured me for so long, I realised, was a sense that I was alone in this, and that was something my father fostered. When I look back on my teens, I can see how he very much made sure I didn’t meet any children in my situation, even though he knew transsexuals with children. My failure to cope, my trauma, and my eating disorder were my own weaknesses. They were my fault, not his. It is through talking with people with similar experiences that I’ve learned to stop judging that girl and recognise the strength it takes to live through it.

Within the last 24 hours, I have listened to the brother of a trans-identified woman on the Beyond Gender podcast recount his experience of trying to communicate with his sister about his research on transgenderism. She told him not to talk to her about it. On TikTok, a young woman recounts how, when she was 12, her autogynephile father, naked, made her take off her clothes and clean the house in front of him. He then broke her nose with a dustpan. He has since committed suicide. She’s refusing to be silent, using her own name, giving her father’s full name.

When someone declares they are transgender, they grab all the attention, both in the family and the media. The narrative becomes about what they are doing, and the focus is on their special project – the name change, clothes, paperwork, medicalisation, etc. Family money is channelled away. Your sacrifice is expected, no matter your age. What my father wanted was necessary; what I wanted was selfish. It is a breach in the normal working of the family that is difficult to articulate and understand. Love becomes conditional on allyship. Estrangement is a constant threat. You can be ostracised by other family members for trying to talk about it.

For many years, these experiences felt as if they had to remain hidden, spoken about only in whispers or behind anonymous usernames. That is slowly changing. Genspect’s Beyond Trans programme has, for several years now, provided online peer and therapist-led groups for parents of trans-identified people and for detransitioners. More than 5000 parents and over 600 detransitioners have already found support through these meetings. The aim is to create spaces where people can meet others who understand the difficult mixture of confusion, frustration, grief, anger, and loyalty that often accompanies these experiences.

Different groups exist for different situations. There are peer-facilitated groups for parents of trans-identified children. There are also groups for parents whose children have gone on to medicalise, and for parents dealing with estrangement from their children.

Genspect has always prided itself on bringing people together, and a whole range of groups and networks were formed and launched at Genspect events. The parents’ support network has expanded beyond recognition since those harrowing days when parents felt condemned to live in secrecy and participate in underground online networks with pseudonyms and secret email accounts. What once existed only in isolated corners of the internet has gradually become a network where people can speak openly and recognise themselves in the stories of others.

Beyond Trans is also expanding to include others whose lives have been shaped by these experiences. Children of trans-identified parents, siblings, trans widows, aunts, and uncles. The group for children of trans-identified parents is one that I now facilitate myself. For me, it has been both a way of meeting others who understand this part of my life and a chance, finally, to offer something back. Whether it is happening to you now or if it happened 30 years ago, you may find it as much of a relief as I did to talk with people who have been there.

If you know someone who has been affected by this issue, please let them know these meetings exist. For many of us, simply discovering that we are not alone can be the beginning of something different.

You can learn more about the Beyond Trans meetings here.

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