Ross

It wasn't even as black and white as that. They didn't actually, it wasn't a specific time when they came out. They just started having issues I guess really the turning point really was the bullying at school, which was because of the isolation at school, because they didn't fit into their kind of gender group. They weren't a boy, so they didn't hang with the boys. But they didn't feel they were a girl, so they didn't have a lot of friends at all. They only really had one friend at school who it turns out now has come out as a lesbian, as a gay female who could maybe relate to my child as a trans child. But I don't think they even discussed whether they were gay or trans. I don't think it ever came up in conversation. And certainly the coming out thing wasn't a big announcement, I'm coming out, it was a gradual thing which kind of started really with the CAMHS appointments, which started mainly because of the friction between mum and child. Mum looked for help via CAMHS and CAMHS couldn't put a finger on it, initially. We, certainly the first interview I went to, the therapist there one week said, my child was PTSD. The next time we went they were bipolar. The next time they went they were autistic. They were, it was kind of they were, pigeon holed, but they couldn't find the right hole. And it wasn't until my child was saying about gender issues that gender even came up. That was probably the first time I ever was aware of anything gender related at all. They brought it up at a CAMHS appointment. And eventually, CAMHS referred us onto the [Gender Identity Development Services]. And at that point, it was like the flood gates opened. Suddenly, my child knew where they were and could relate to the therapists and suddenly said, ''Finally, somebody's taken me seriously. Somebody seems to understand.'' And so it was like the flood gates, flood gates had opened. And everything then started to fall into place.

It's no kind of a criticism of the NHS. They are very overstretched and they can only give the appointments they can give when they can give them. But the mental health of the patients while they are on the waiting list is the critical thing. I think that's why the suicide numbers among the young trans are so high is it's the wait between appointments. I think it's, that's what drags 'em down from our experience that's what drags it down. And the fact you don't feel you're getting anywhere.

Our experience there has been good on the grounds that our GP was supportive. I read through Mermaids that a lot of GP have no clue. So maybe they could do some education on gender issues. But in our personal case, we've had a very, very good GP. But again, it's down to research and before you register with a GP. Check before you sign up. If you've got a trans child, ask the questions before you register. And if you find that it's a transphobe running the surgery, go to a different surgery. You do have free will. You don't have to go to that one. Okay, it might be half a mile from your house rather than three miles, but it's your health and your child's health. So, do a little bit of research first and you can make life easier or hard, it's up to you.

What kind of questions would you ask a practice to—?

Immediately mine was black and white: Have you dealt with any trans, you know, patients in the past. What's your stance on transitioning patients? Have you had any training in trans issues? Are we likely to get a good response? Certain things, ours again was particularly brilliant on pronouns. When the, when you make an appointment and it's put up on the visual display unit. Would you like it to be Mr, Mrs or Mx and they had that option. But again, it's only asking before you register. You could ask the receptionist, do you have that as an option and if not, why not? I find that a lot with form filling as well, it's always male or female. It's always Mr or Mrs. There isn't very often an Mx option, which my child has found with employment, filling in employment forms, Mr or Miss. There's no allowance for transition. There's no Mx possibility, which is, is only another box on the form. It's not difficult to put into practice.

So we did keep finding different teams each time. Various people would leave the service. So we'd have another fresh team and we'd cover the same ground. It was almost like they were treading water, which in hindsight is possibly because the blockers were refused and [GIDS] other than give you blockers can't really do a lot. They can't issue you testosterone until you're over 18 which is beyond their remit, because they only take until 16, 17 years old. So it did feel like I say a waste of time, but we didn't really gain anything. I would take a day off work. [Name of participant’s child] would take a day off work. We travel up to north [name of city] with cost of travel and we'd sit and talk about stuff that we talked about six weeks ago to a different individual. We kept getting different teams. May have been just our situation was unfortunate. We'd one team where two of the three people in our team fell pregnant at the same time. And both left the services for their maternity leave. So then we got another team. We went right back to the very beginning and started covering all the ground that we felt we'd already covered. They were, their follow up notes passed on, but each one of them wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. So we would just cover the same things over and over and over, which my child got quite disillusioned with [GIDS]. Initially, were looking forward to appointments, because they were being listened to and taken seriously. But then towards the end it was kind of well, we're not gonna get anything. We're just gonna go and sit and chat in a room for twenty minutes and we both gotta take a day off work. We've both gotta lose money earnings and we've gotta pay out money for travel. We go all the way up there. The highlight was going into Subway and having a sandwich afterwards was kind of the big benefit was oh well we're in [name of city] so we'll got to a museum and we'll do something after the appointment. The appointments didn't really gain much.

It was a long time and as I say, it was a bit of the knife edge whether they would actually make it that far, which is why we went down the private route to try and accelerate things which I don't know if it helped or not. I don't know how much quicker adult GIDS reacted, because they did know that we'd been to the private. They were informed, the clinic, I don't know if they're duty bound or whether they do it as a courtesy thing. When we arrived at [name of place] they knew that we'd been to the private clinic. They had notes from the private clinic. And it did seem very fast track from that point on. It was almost like they were in competition with the private clinic. They wanted to kind of prove that the NHS was a good service and was proactive and was—cause other people we know that've been there have been on a much longer wait to get testosterone where ours was pretty much first appointment, bang, yes you can have it. We're just waiting for the results and you'll be, you'll get your prescription within weeks. Whereas we know other people that have been there for months, a year at adult clinic waiting to get prescribed hormone treatment. So, I think the private clinic maybe prompted. It maybe helped it. But we don't know for sure. It's certainly use, I would recommend other people if their children are very, very kind of critical stage, it is an option if you go private you do get the results much quicker. I don't think even private can do testosterone before the child is 18. But it does seem a lot smoother and quicker. It's got, you get what you pay for kind of thing if you're paying privately you get the attention and you get the appointments quicker, which is an overstretched NHS.

I don't live with my child's mother. We split up when my child was six months old, but have been a very hands on parent. We've had a 50/50 split from the word go. Child spent time with both of us on a three, four day split. So he'd spend three days with me and three days with mum and then four days with me, four days with mum, cause I didn't wanna end up being a weekend dad and just picking him up at the weekend. I was involved in school, in nursery, the same as mum. We literally had 50/50 over 14 days we'd get seven days each. And it kind of changed the weekend thing. So, it could be Thursday, Friday, Saturday that I'd have the child and then the child would be Sunday, Monday, Tuesday with mum, so it kept everything, Christmases, everything were always jumbled up. So we'd literally have a 50/50 share. Mum was always absolutely anti transition from the word go, will not use, even to this day, we'll not use correct pronouns. Won't even accept the Deed Poll changed name. So, there's always been a bit of a clash where I just accepted the transition completely and utterly and was 100% supportive where mum, still to this day, still doesn't accept the transition even though we're quite a long way through the journey now. But still won't accept it. There's always been a lot of friction between my child and my child's mother, where me and my child have always got on brilliantly. And I've got a very, very good, strong open relationship and talk about everything where with mum it's very polar. It's completely different. The transition began when they were at secondary school. There was a lot of bullying from other students at school. A lot of isolation and that ended up with a suicide attempt and at that point, social services became involved and I was then granted 100% custody, cause it was deemed they were unsafe with mother, because mother was actually causing a lot of the arguments or not helping and not supporting. So they were deemed that they should be with me full time, which they did for about a year. Then the transition moved on a lot. At that point, both of us were attending CAMHS with our child, but separately. So we didn't go to the meetings as a family unit, because we weren't a family unit we were two individual parents with a child in common. So we did both attend CAMHS at various times and we were eventually referred on to the [GIDS], where initially I wasn't allowed to go and only mum went. And mum being absolutely anti transition made every or all the very early [Gender Identity Development Service] appointments about her. So it wasn't directed at our child and our child got no benefit from it at all. There was just lots of arguments between mum and the specialist and therapists at the [Gender Identity Development Service], which didn't work very well for our child. Our child didn't feel was getting attention or moving forward or anything. Then after the suicide attempt, I started going solely to the [Gender Identity Development Service] and we progressed quite, quite well. We Deed Polled. At that point, they'd just left school, secondary school passed with some GCSEs. Not quite the grades that were expected. But a lot of that was sadly down to the school who didn't deal with the bullying issues, put my child in the isolation block. So my child didn't attend lessons, they just went to school and done their own thing in the library, which meant they got, they passed GCSEs which I'm really proud of, but didn't get the grades that the school were expecting. And it also put them off education. So although they'd been offered a college place, they decided they didn't wanna go to college, cause they'd lost faith in the education system, had just assumed they would get bullied. Although I assured them college is very different to school and certainly being trans, you'd probably be really popular at college, because it's cool and kind of fashionable and you'll probably be fine, and it's a totally different experience. But they'd been put off completely. So ended up leaving school with some GCSEs and just getting employed, which they have always been employed, well not always been employed, but they've had periods of employment, periods of unemployment. A lot of that was down to mental health, because their mental health declined quite badly. They had low self-esteem and low confidence. And found friction at work. If there was any sign of bullying they would fold their cards and leave their job rather than deal with the bullying, because they'd been bullied at school they decided they wouldn't get bullied any more, but left the job rather than going to an employer and dealing with it and getting it sorted out would just jack in the job and leave, which was okay and as I say was supportive of the whole thing and because of the trying to build their self-confidence and self-esteem, it's kind of you've have actually got mental health issues that need focusing on and you need help with and you will be okay. You will get through it with help and with time.

Nearly all of them are suffering depression and suffering anxiety certainly for mine, still telephone conversations, they can't do telephone, because they've got a female voice. They sound like a female when they talk on the telephone. So then the person on the other end of the telephone will miss-gender them, because they sound female. I know that is gonna change with the testosterone. It will have an effect and their voice will hopefully get much deeper and then they'll start using the telephone. But that's an issue at the moment is, they refuse to do anything on the telephone. They'll send emails, they will send text. But they won't talk on telephone, because their voice sounds female.

Although they're different individuals and everyone's case is different, there are a lot of really, really stark similarities. Nearly all of them self-harm. Nearly all of them self-harm to a degree that it can get worse to the point of suicide attempts. And talking about your child trying to take their own life is quite a difficult thing to talk about. But there's hundreds of parents on there that their children have done exactly the same. And now I'm further down the tube, I speak to parents on their children are just beginning and it's mild self-harming. And you can kind of advise them, keep an eye on that, cause that could quite likely get worse. And it could get worse to the point where they do take an attempt at their own life.

We got a supportive GP. Prescriptions are just kind of rolling and they're on testosterone gel rather than injections, which I'm happy with and they're happy with, cause they're not overly keen on needles. And they like the fact they're on gel because they have some every day where with the injections, through research, my own research there are pits and troughs. They have a big spike of a testosterone when they have the injection and then it's slowly wears off until they have the next injection and then they have a big spike again [laughs] which means the hormones are going up and down all over the place and being on hormone treatment it gets very messy, cause you don't know what's the effect of the hormone and what's the effect of the pits and troughs of having the injection. So having the gradual use of the gel certainly suits us and it was [name of participant’s son] choice as a lot of things through the whole transition thing. It's kind of, I'll support their choice, because it's their life. It's not my life.

Certainly one of probably one of the bigger issues was contraceptive pill to stop periods, because that was a really, really big issue [Gender Identity Development Service] had previously offered hormone blockers, but that was at the point when mum was going to the meetings and mum fiercely went against blockers. So then [Gender Identity Development Service] never ever mentioned it again until my child was eighteen and pretty much out the other side of puberty. So they did suffer through puberty. I suggested to our GP that they go on contraceptive pill, not for contraceptive purposes but to manage the hormones up and down and the menstrual cycle, which our very, very supportive GP looked into and prescribed the pill that was very, very, very low oestrogen where most contraceptive pills were much higher, which gave us a lot of confidence in our GP, the fact that they went out of their way to look, initially they didn't. Initially they just gave a stock standard pill. But after maybe a month they said that they'd looked into it and researched it and found that there was a high oestrogen level and realised that that wasn't conducive with a trans person, so changed the pill. So the pill they're on now is not very good on contraception, but it's got zero oestrogen. So it's really good for trans.

We discussed it, it came up at the first [name] GIDS meeting and sadly, because my child didn't have the confidence to say, ''Absolutely not. I definitely don't want it.'' They thought that to please the person that was asking they should say that they would look into it. And then we had a barrage of appointments offered at various fertility treatment places and my child then thought that that was a stalling tactic, because you can't harvest eggs if you're on testosterone. So they thought it was just a stalling tactic to stop them starting testosterone. But they've always been pretty adamant that they personally don't want to have any children. They didn't want the invasion of egg harvesting, because it's an area of the body that they don't want looking at, playing with, touching, talking about, they don't even wanna think about that area of their body. So they were absolutely anti harvesting

I guess it was because they were trans. But it's, the main thing at school was my child being called a butch lesbian, because they kind of identified as male and dressed as male. But the kids didn't actually know necessarily that they were trans. They saw a girl with a short haircut who wears boy's clothes must be a lesbian. And it was more sexuality than gender. At that age they can't differentiate between the two. Most of the bullying there was more on their sexual bias than a gender issue. They didn't have the brain scope I guess to get their head round it’s a transition of gender. It's got nothing to do with sexuality at all.

How did the school deal with that?

Again we are going back a little bit and they weren't informed and they were absolutely diabolical, really. Didn't, didn't do any—I went in to see the headmaster over the three year period I think I went in six or seven times. And all they’ve actually done was put my child in the isolation block, rather than deal with the bullies. There's five or six people doing the bullying. It's easier to deal with your one individual than it is deal with the five or six, rather than stop the bullying we’ll extract your child from the situation where they get bullied and put them in the isolation unit, which, my child was isolated already or feeling isolated, feeling different from everybody and then was put in the isolation block, which then actually created more bullying, because then, “why you in the isolation block?”. And then they'd either have to explain or just get bullied for being a thicko in the isolation block.

They use Mx on a lot of things. They use Mr a lot more now, now they're on hormone treatment. Pre hormone treatment they would refer as Mx or identify as Mx. The GP pointed out to us that Mx is a very, very good thing on the NHS records, because if there was ever a car crash, a nasty emergency accident and you're rushed into a strange hospital where they don't know you or hospital abroad for example. If your pronoun is Mx immediately it's gonna make them look twice, because they don't get many Mxs. If it's Mr or Mrs, especially with my child's situation where anatomically certainly the downstairs department will be female. If you need an emergency operation, but you're identifying as male and on your records you're Mr then all of a sudden they remove clothes and find that you're not a Mr, it could delay things by seconds which could mean life and death kind of thing. And it was our GP that explained that, because they are a really good, supportive GP that looked into things and looked kind of outside the box a little bit and said, they suggested that we keep Mx for all medical records, because later in life, you're still gonna need the smear test. And a computer that's looking in black and white, if you're identifying as Mr you're not gonna be invited in for a smear test because you wouldn't need to be. Whereas if you're Mx the computer, even a computer is gonna go, ''Eh, that's a bit weird. We don't get many of them.'' So somebody's gonna look at it more than once, which I think is a good thing, having just that option on forms, on all sorts of kind of formal things, having it as an option. It draws attention to it, which some trans people may find offensive or not want to do. But they do have free will to put Mr or Mrs, but if you don't have the option of Mx well then you've got to choose one or the other.

A lot of the media coverage, yes, some of it anti trans. But it doesn't matter, because the trans issue is getting media coverage, which means a certain amount of people are gonna read about it and get some education on it. Where keeping it all hidden and taboo – it remains hidden and taboo forevermore. It's got, it needs more exposure.

It was, it was a bit of an eye opener, because meeting other parents there that were having grievance counselling, cause they'd lost a child. I just couldn't get my head round at all. It's the worry you have and your child's still sitting on the sofa next to you. It's in essence it's still the same child, a change in gender but you are their parent and you haven't lost a child. Personally, I couldn't get my head round it. I couldn't understand why it was such a big thing that you haven't lost your child at all. Your child is still there. In essence, it's still exactly the same child.

Ah, family completely accepting. I don't think any member of the family were being anti. Both my parents knew, they passed away fairly recently and within a three year period, both of them died. But they were not massively supportive, but certainly not anti. They were very happy or my mum was very happy that some of the inheritance money was being put forward to pay for private treatment. As I say, my brother and my sister. We're not a very close family. So but they've cottoned onto the name change, the deed polling. They use the correct pronouns and they're relatively supportive. My own social circle of friends are totally supportive. Quite a few of them had problems with the pronouns, because they've known my child since birth. So for 13 years of Ross got a daughter and now, all of a sudden Ross has got a son. So some of them slip up with pronouns. But most of them make the effort and try. I don't think I've met anybody that is unsupportive apart from mum, sadly.’

Mum was always absolutely anti transition from the word go, will not use, even to this day, will not use correct pronouns. Won't even accept the Deed Poll changed name. So, there's always been a bit of a clash where I just accepted the transition completely and utterly and was 100% supportive where mum, still to this day, still doesn't accept the transition even though we're quite a long way through the journey now. But still won't accept it. There's always been a lot of friction between my child and my child's mother, where me and my child have always got on brilliantly.

[Gender Identity Development Service] had previously offered hormone blockers, but that was at the point when mum was going to the meetings and mum fiercely went against blockers. So then [Gender Identity Development Service] never ever mentioned it again until my child was eighteen and pretty much out the other side of puberty.

Had they started blockers at 13 then they could have started testosterone at 17, 18. And puberty would have been a whole lot smoother and easier. So, I've, not the fault of the NHS, not the fault of the [Gender Identity Development Service]. It was more mum's intervention which then really scared them off, cause it was never mentioned in the early appointments that I went to they just breached the subject and they didn't even bring—I didn't know, because at that point, I wasn't aware that we could have done it.

Very often you are gonna be their rock. You are gonna be the only person they're gonna trust and feel safe with. And you've gotta keep that there. If you start losing that then you're gonna lose your child. They'll throw 'themselves in front of a train. And it will happen, because everybody's gotta have somebody to share their problems with. And if they don't feel they can share it with their parent then, even if the parent's unsupportive of the transition that you kind of need to be there just for their child. It's still their child, whether they're male or female shouldn't make any difference, but some it does. It's kind of—but listen and take 'em seriously, because if, for them, it is a real serious big thing. And if it's a phase, well then it will pass. If it is a fad, it will pass. So, keeping the communication open. If it is only a fad or a phase let them know that it's completely okay to experiment to try and if they want to U-turn that's completely okay as well. You're backing them unconditionally. It doesn't matter. But keeping that communication open, so you know what's going on in their head.

I guess it's having training in specific trans issues. But a lot of things that they don't realise are as offensive as they are, like miss-gendering. You can, they can get it right four times out of ten and the patient will come out feeling misgendered, because they've got it wrong six times out of ten. So, kind of really paying attention to it or using non-gendered terms, which, within the training of nurses and people could be kind of commonplace, because it's not difficult to use they/them rather than him/her or patient or use the person's name. You, you, you fill in forms when you register, so they know your name whether you use your Christian name of your Surname doesn't matter, but cutting out the Mr or Mrs and just using the person's name.