Gender

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My partner is autistic and has recently came out to me as transgender. I 100% support them, however, I feel it may be a phase, my partner tends to go through phases quite a bit, they wanted an electric scooter last year and spent around £900 on the scooter and things connecting to it, now the scooter sits in the shed without being used. My partner also takes on the persona of characters he likes, for example, we watched Moon-Knight when it came out this year, about a month or so after the last episode came out, they told me they think they've got D.I.D like the main character has, I sort of expected this to happen. Now he/they have made this revelation about them being transgender, I'm not sure what to believe, I'm supporting him but I'm sort of waiting for the conversation where he tells me he's decided to go against transitioning or taking hormones.

What shall I do?

It is extremely normal for autistic people to have deep, passionate interests in a particular thing for a while, and then eventually move on to the next thing.
My son's thing is cats.

I think it is totally ok for a person to question their gender identity, regardless of the outcome of that questioning. It sounds like that is where your partner is right now. This is normal for a lot of people, neurodivergent or no. Although, autistic people are significantly more likely to be LGBTQ+ than neurotypical people.



I think you should support them in their journey, as you said you have been doing until now. Based on what you said, it sounds like maybe this isn't the main issue though. Is it that you want more stability from your partner in general? If so, maybe that is a topic worth thinking about and discussing separately from their gender identity.

That speaks to the fact that your partner is quite impressionable, especially with that antecedents you list there.

If he really wants to transition after storing as much information as possible, he would make an appointment with a doctor for this radical change of knowing what led him to see himself as transgender, and the effects of the hormones he will see in his body, then only in the long run would I take what he says seriously.

That's my advice based on what you say.

It might not be a phase. Maybe he's been holding this stuff in for a very long time, out of fear.

You are right to be cautious. 50% of the people who are encouraged to go down this road will attempt suicide.

*Due to abuse and harassment from other people.

To OP: You also can't really "do" anything. You can't just make another person not question their gender or anything, and if you don't want to confront them about going through "phases" of identifying as different things then there's nothing to really "do" besides just deal with it and respect their identity or break up if it frustrates you that much.

!	Cornflake wrote:
	HeroOfHyrule wrote: timf wrote: You are right to be cautious. *50% of the people who are encouraged to go down this road will attempt suicide. *Due to abuse and harassment from other people. This ^ Please be more careful when quoting statistics as evidence or proof. Very often there is much more involved and omitting that can create a false and sometimes hurtful impression on others.

^ Be advised some of the people posting based on my knowledge of their previous posts here maybe speaking from very close if not exactly first hand knowledge , regardless of other peoples level of experience. Just a fyi.

Will the anti-trans people in this thread please just buzz off? You are at best irrelevant and at worst a hate group. The OP is obviously not anti-trans. The thread isn't even about that. So please stop using this as a platform to propagate misinformation.

[opinion=mine]

At this point, a "Wait and See" position may be best.  You expressed that your partner's behavior may just be a phase, but it could also be real.

If you personally know any trans people, you may benefit with a few discrete discussions with them, and maybe read up more on medical transgender topics to supplement any personal accounts you may have heard or read.

Other than that, there is not much I can say, except "Good luck".



[/opinion]

^This.

I pretty much knew since I was in middle school that I wasn't straight, but my fear of that reality in the world I was born into drove me to lie to myself about it for years. I grew up in a family where I was told that it was a choice to be queer and that if I felt the way I naturally felt, then I must have chosen to be that way, and so I was choosing to sin and I was going to hell. As a survival mechanism, whenever I'd get anxious about any thought I had that wasn't 100% heteronormative, I'd pretend my unhappiness was because of something else, something in my environment that I could control like my choice of food, music, clothes, even what work I do for a living. Constant shifting to try to make myself feel comfortable had the effect of making me look like a pretty capricious person. Sooner or later though I had to address the actual cause and not dance around it anymore, and I'm glad that I did.

I've never really struggled with my gender identity, just my sexuality, but at least two of my trans friends have described similar experiences on their journey, so maybe we're not the only ones.

The fear of Hell has made many non-conforming people miserable, especially children.  Religion has ruined more lives (I think) than any other social institution.

I just posted what I know from experience. I'm still painstakingly keeping my male identity a secret from my parents.

I'm not sure of the parallel you are making. It the partner the "cat" or is the gender issue? Being transgender or questioning one's gender is rarely a phase. The fact that there is a question there means there is an issue.