HAli said that his true identity was female during the second wave of lockdown. It was from November 2020 to the spring of the following year. He was 15 years old. His teachers were doing their best to give him work, but he spent a lot of time online. He was watching “Philosophy Tube,” a YouTube channel where men in their late 20s talk about philosophy. One day, the host transformed into a woman, put on makeup, grew long hair and wore a dress and appeared in a video.
It was about a week after Harry watched it that he told us he was transgender. In the video the presenter said that being a woman had lifted all the stress off his shoulders. My son told us: “ In the same way. I realized My stress comes from pretending to be someone I’m not. I’ve been living a false life.”
“I am truly a woman,” he said.
I was totally cool with that. I said, “How do you know what it feels like to be a woman?” He had no answer and got upset about the question. Since then, there’s been a lot of tension in the home.
Her son, who attends a single-sex state school in London, told his friends his new female name. He also joined an LGBTQ+ club run by an assistant who had helped her son transition. When she was then called in for a meeting with the school because of her son’s absences and his complaints about not being called by his new name, the assistant was called in to give her perspective. It was a good thing that her son was coming to terms with his new reality, she said.
Harry applied to a mixed sixth-form college using his new name and gender. The school accepted him as a girl from the start. He started wearing make-up and very short skirts and dresses. I said, “I don’t think that’s really appropriate for school.” To his credit, he never wore any of those particular short skirts after that. But I was pretty tormented by it all. It was hard to say anything without crying and arguing, and gradually I stopped saying anything at all.
We tried family therapy. I found someone who didn’t have a strong opinion on transgender issues and said we wanted to talk about conflicts, not specific issues. We wanted to live together with our different opinions. My son was adamant, and said there was no compromise. “One day I’m going to cut ties with you.”
He’s polite when he argues, never yells, just replies with a string of words: “Be yourself. You’re assigned a gender at birth. Gender is something that happens inside your mind.”
I think being part of a club at school gave him a sense of belonging. He was excited because he knew he was special and respected in this group and it explained why he felt uncomfortable. He’d always been small and skinny and not very athletic. He didn’t want to admit to himself that it bothered him. [what others thought] Still, this sideways move to become a notable figure on the school scene must have felt special.
He went to his GP – you can do so from the age of 17 without telling your parents – and he was put on the waiting list for an adult gender clinic – but the list is five years long, he said. The doctor refused to prescribe hormones, saying he didn’t have enough expertise, and rightly so.
Harry, 18, did what he felt was the next step. He ordered his own hormones online, without medical supervision or a prescription. They came from India or China. We immediately realised what the packaging was and stopped giving them to him. We said this was borderline illegal, but the law in this area seems pretty vague, probably because we were not a UK company. He accused us of theft. He’d bought it with money he’d earned from a Saturday job, so we called the police on him for theft.
Young people can basically buy these hormones online with their own pocket money. They’re not even that expensive. There has to be a way to stop this. My daughter, who is now in college, knows several people who are buying these drugs online in bulk and distributing them as an act of charity.
My son is definitely on hormones, and I can see how it has affected my body now that my breasts have gotten bigger. He still lives here, and although he comes over for meals we don’t really talk. I don’t use his new name, and I avoid using pronouns around him because I know it will start an argument.
I don’t think he has any regrets. He told me that he felt a social responsibility to be a pioneer and to sacrifice for others, even if it didn’t bring him happiness. He was always a social justice warrior, even if he wasn’t recycling.
Our home life has completely fallen apart. This situation is really depressing. I cannot convince him. I have tried but it only seems to get worse.
“The doctor said that my son should have gender reassignment surgery.”
This summer, after my son Tom and his boarding mates left for their post-A-Level holiday, a parcel arrived at our house in Norfolk. It was marked as coming from a pharmacy in Hong Kong. It had been left in the kitchen.
When Tom got back, I asked him about it, but he wouldn’t tell me. “I just signed for it,” I said. “I hope it’s nothing bad.” I suspected it might have been magic mushrooms. I made it very clear that I would never sign anything like that on my doorstep again.
Tom took the package back to his room and a few weeks later, when I walked by, I found the package had been opened. Tom wasn’t in the room. I felt so bad because I had just turned 18, but I needed to know what was in the package. I walked closer and realized I was looking at a box of female hormones, estradiol, and things I had to look into, testosterone suppressants. I felt sick.
He was downstairs playing the piano. I went up to him and asked him if he wanted to talk about what was in that box. He just yelled. He never gets upset or cries. I asked him, “Why don’t you tell your doctor?” He said he didn’t want to talk about it because the waiting list (for the medication) is years long. “How do you know if these hormones are real or if they’re laced with something?” I said. “How do you know about the side effects?”
I was pretty desperate so I called my GP myself. “She’s on hormones, she doesn’t have a prescription,” I said. “I’m really worried, I know she’s 18, what should I do?” The doctor sounded very sympathetic and then said, “So have you thought about GIDS? [the gender identity clinic that closed this year]”Maybe we should try surgery.” I felt so angry and helpless. How had this happened?
Tom was always a bright, sensitive kid. He got a full scholarship to a top boarding school, where he ignored the rules. I thought it was because he was a teenager, but he was later diagnosed with ADHD. I think he was a bit bullish at school; it was often well-off. But he found his place in the theater, and he loved it. He had friends, he had lots of hobbies.
But being locked at home at 15 years old meant his mental health had deteriorated significantly. He was addicted to TikTok and Instagram and, like many kids, he was constantly online. He became anxious and expressed suicidal thoughts. The police had to be called once because he was sitting on the edge of a window.
• Gender clinic waiting lists include thousands of children under the age of five
I am a single mother, and my father is not involved. During the pandemic, with so many restrictions, I struggled to get support for my son. A friend of mine who is a retired child psychologist stepped in. We thought he had general anxiety disorder. He was receiving counseling at school, but if any issues related to his gender identity came up, I was not informed. He was 15 at the time, so I figured someone would tell me.
He came out to me as bisexual when we were 16. He blurted it out at the dinner table. I said, “Is that all you’re worried about? Thanks for letting me know.” I thought that was the end of it.
Our son’s mental health continued to deteriorate. At 17 he jumped off a pier at low tide over the Christmas holidays and broke his ankle. After being released from hospital we took him for an emergency GP appointment. The doctor met with our son for 20 minutes and later broached the idea of surgery over the phone, suggesting that my son should have part of himself removed. This was exactly what happened. I was shocked and furious. I wrote a letter of complaint to the British Medical Association.
Tom has taken hormones that he bought online and will probably take more. As far as I know, Tom has never changed his dress code at home, never changed his pronouns, never changed his name. He is away working a part-time job over the summer and staying with a friend. We keep in touch via WhatsApp. He will be coming home soon and then he will start college.
I sent Tom some links to articles about detransitioning and told him, “Whatever you do, look at the other side of the conversation.” He sent me this article from The Guardian in response.
I told my son that I love him and will never reject him. If he is truly transgender, I congratulate him after looking at all the data and case studies. Everyone should be able to live a life free from discrimination.
However, my intuition is that there’s something more sinister going on. I’m extremely worried about him getting put on hormones. His brain is still developing. Most people feel pretty weird when they hit puberty. To just affirm or tell him he has the wrong body is definitely child abuse.
Names in this article have been changed.
