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I need some advice.
My depressive 22yo nephew just came out as MTF trans, is changing his name, and will be starting hormone treatment. It’s a huge shock: he’s been depressed for years, is mildly autistic, but he’s a gamer and has had manosphere opinions in the past so I would never have thought this possible.
This terrifies me because my 5YO son is also mildly on the spectrum and is impressionable. Now that this is “in the family” I am worried he will cotton on to it.
My personal view on trans is neither here nor there, but for the record I think it’s a mental illness spread by social contagion (like anorexia). This may be incorrect, but if it is, what model should I have for this?
My primary concern is to minimize the odds my son becomes trans, or becomes confused, exposing us to questions from his school, etc.
How should I handle this? What should I tell him about his cousin? What would you do?
I probably teach my kids about mental illness and try to sugarcoat that his cousin is ill in a gentle way (which he is via depression, which you can motte and bailey for the trans thing if you get called out on it). I'd teach my kids binary genders by showing, not telling.
I'd take comfort in the fact that by the time your child reaches adulthood, this social contagion is likely to be in decline (with more clearly explored science on hormone disrupters, links to autism, studies on conversion leading to suicide etc).
It seems like the direction of travel is for child transition to stop but for adult transition to be normalized.
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