My older sister and I were very close throughout our childhood. Growing up in London, just over a year apart in age, we shared a room. And although our interests and personalities were different, we always loved playing together.
I was drawn towards Barbie dolls and Sylvanian Families – what you might call stereotypical girl toys. She was more into superheroes. But so what? I never thought anything of it. Being girls didn’t mean we had to like the same stuff.
Around the age of 12 or 13, things started going downhill for my sister, however. She struggled to fit in at school. She had never been happy with her appearance – tall, broad-shouldered, well-built – and towards the end of primary school, she was bullied quite badly for it. She decided early on in secondary school that she wanted to get her hair chopped into a short, pixie cut. If a haircut would boost her confidence, then why not?
But a gradual decline set in after this. She started wearing increasingly unflattering clothes. Lots of chunky rings and necklaces. Little by little, she was making herself look less feminine.
This was around six years ago, when I was still barely aware of what transgender meant. I assumed she was trying to find herself by trying out different styles. It never occurred to me that my sister was really a boy.
It did occur to her. She said nothing of this to my parents or me at that stage, but we later found out that in her early teens she had told all her friends that she was trans.
What we did know then was that the change in her physical appearance correlated with a deterioration in her mental health. She started to refuse to go to school. At home she was self-harming. I was desperately worried for her. So were my parents and she was now receiving counselling at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).
When we went into Covid lockdown in 2020, she became glued to her iPad and phone, spending hours a day on her own. She was 15 by then, and we thought she was trying to keep in touch with her friends. What she was actually doing was immersing herself in online transgender culture. She became obsessed with trans influencers, adapting her personality to imitate them. She bought the same trousers as one of them and wore the same jewellery.
We didn’t realise what was going on until that August, when she sent our mum a message. “I’ve known since I was born that I am in the wrong body,” she wrote.
She hated her body, she said. She wanted puberty blockers and to undergo top surgery – the removal of breast tissue. She told our mum the boy’s name she wished to be called, and said her pronouns were now he/him.
I remember how my mum looked after receiving the message. Her bloodshot eyes, as if she had been crying for hours. The sleeplessness.
“Mum, what’s wrong?” I asked, worried.
“Your sister thinks she’s a boy.”
Things became even worse after that. My parents were naturally concerned about their vulnerable teenage daughter. They didn’t tell her outright, “You’re not a boy, don’t be silly.” But because they didn’t affirm her in exactly the way she wanted – because they didn’t say she was their son, nor contact her school and our whole family and tell them this, nor agree to puberty blockers – she lost her temper with them night after night.
Cowering upstairs, I heard her screaming and shouting at them, repeating what I subsequently discovered from my own internet research were stock phrases that gender-questioning teens are encouraged to use by members of the trans community online. “If you don’t affirm my identity, I’ll kill myself,” she threatened. There was something weirdly robotic about it, as if she had been indoctrinated and was following a script, although her passion and upset was clearly very real.
I felt painfully conflicted. My generation has been influenced to think trans is something you have to support unquestioningly. And I did – until it became a reality in our household. Only then did I realise how dangerous this side of the internet is, in which vulnerable teenagers who feel they don’t fit in are encouraged down a route that might not be right for them.
My sister seemed to think that, because she was struggling mentally and didn’t fit in, she must be a boy. Looking back, I can see how this powerful online community validated her. She connected with others like her – or those she thought were like her.
I couldn’t go along with it. I struggled to talk to her about her issues, but told her I loved her as a sister (which to her, obviously, wasn’t the right thing to say). I saw how much she was being influenced online and, like my parents, I was afraid.
It was when she returned to school after lockdown – she was in Year 11 by then – that we received the worst fright of all. My sister, who was taking antidepressants and anxiety medication, overdosed on paracetamol. At school she collapsed and was rushed to A&E. Thankfully, she was OK. But in these circumstances, CAMHS is alerted, and she told them she was a boy trapped inside a girl’s body. She also told them her parents had refused to accept her name and new identity. My mother received an extremely upsetting visit from social services as a result.
In many ways we were lucky. The social worker decided the case need not be taken any further – she could see we were a loving and supportive family. And while some schools seem to allow children to change their names and pronouns without even telling their parents, my sister’s school did not go along with her new gender identity. They knew she had mental health problems, had been bullied and was vulnerable, and sensibly didn’t want to rush down the gender route beside her.
(The same could not be said of her CAMHS therapist who, it turned out, was advising her to attend a support group for trans children, run by trans adults.)
I couldn’t tell my friends about any of this. I was afraid I would be labelled transphobic and unloving for refusing to blindly accept that my sister was really a boy. I badly wanted to support her, but I knew my sister so well, and knew this wasn’t who she was.
Finally, last year, we learned what was really going on: my sister, by then aged 17, was diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Her feelings of discomfort within her own body turned out to be not because she was actually a boy, but because of sensory issues that are common among those on the spectrum: a feeling of overstimulation brought on by her changing shape as she went through puberty.
Last summer, she and I and our mum sat down and had a long chat. “I used to think I was trans,” said my sister. “Now I realise it was my ADHD and autism.”
She told us she had felt vulnerable and isolated going into lockdown, and had completely immersed herself online and found this ready-made support system of trans people. The way she described it, it was more like a cult than a community. She recognises she was sucked into thinking she was someone she wasn’t. Her emergence from trans was gradual. But hearing her say out loud that she now knew this wasn’t who she was was such a relief, my mum and I burst into tears.
Although she still struggles with her mental health and autism diagnosis, she is doing well today. She finished her A-levels in the summer and is now on her gap year.
I feel like I lost my sister and have now regained her. But at age 16, I still can’t talk about this openly. There are strict rules my generation is expected to follow when it comes to trans, and I know I’d be breaking them if I told the full story and how it made me feel.
This has made it a very isolating experience. I don’t know anyone else who has been through the same experience, perhaps because so few people of my age dare to talk about trans in any way but positively.
It was so hard seeing someone I loved being effectively brainwashed. I hope that in speaking out, even anonymously, other young people worried about vulnerable siblings questioning their gender will know they are not alone.
CAMHS has been contacted for a response
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