A mother has penned an essay declaring how “proud” she is of her transgender son, 15, for going through “menopause.”
In the article for Essential Kids–an Australian magazine for parents–the mother begins by telling her readers that her trans son, born female, was feeling a bit funny.
She writes:
My 15-year-old son started feeling nauseous and “a bit off” a couple of weeks ago. He skipped dinner and headed to bed early, but the next morning he still wasn’t himself. The nausea had lifted but it was replaced with sweats and hot flashes.
It couldn’t have been something he ate because we’d all been eating the same food, and it would be bizarre if he’d caught anything because my house has been on a pretty strict lockdown for weeks, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
But then she makes the startling revelation of a different hormonal change:
It was when we started googling the symptoms that the penny dropped: my son was going through menopause.
The mother explains that her son had begun identifying as a boy since the age of twelve and had been taking puberty blockers to delay the onset of imminent bodily changes misaligned to her child’s gender identification.
In Australia, children cannot begin taking hormones or medically transitioning until they are sixteen.
“After years of living as a boy, my son was ready to take this step, until he can start taking testosterone when he turns 16,” she explains.
The drugs her son had been taking had halted the child’s natural estrogen production, causing the menopausal symptoms.
For the first week, he didn’t feel any different. Once we remembered to go back and read the literature, we realised that was the time his body was adjusting to the drug Lucrin, which inhibits the body’s ability to make oestrogen.
Once that oestrogen tide goes out, that’s when a short and sharp menopause can hit. Apart from that, the only side effect is potential bone brittleness from a loss of calcium, so we’re being vigilant about ensuring he’s keeping up his vitamins.
For my son, those menopausal symptoms lasted only about a week. He continued to feel physically a bit off, but emotionally he was elated because he knew that the change he’s been waiting for was finally occurring.
Despite the unnatural changes to the child’s endocrine system, the mother defends the decision as her son was reportedly feeling depressed before administering the relevant drugs.
The mother argues that her son is living more comfortably following the changes–which have been met with some disagreement.
She finishes with:
Now that he’s been through those symptoms once, my son won’t have to endure them again. He’ll have quarterly injections that will top up the puberty blockers until he’s old enough to start on testosterone – then that’s when the real changes will start to take place.
We can’t wait.
In the US, a self-described “queer” wife of a Lutheran pastor was proudly boasting of her daughter’s impending gender transition with puberty blockers being covered by her husband’s church insurance.
