One mother’s story: A teen’s transformation in only 3 months

Here we have an account from another mother of a teen girl who wants to “transition” to male. This woman is one of many others I’ve heard from, all essentially in the same situation. I am beginning to think of these women as Everymoms, because their tales are so similar in their basic plot:  A socially awkward  or depressed girl who only began to talk about “transitioning” in adolescence–and only after being influenced by peers, the Internet, and/or over-eager “gender therapists.”

I intend this account to be part of an ongoing series of guest posts. Parents in a similar situation, please consider sharing your stories here. Anonymity is respected, although anyone who wants to speak publicly and openly is welcome too.


Our older daughter has always done things her own way, and never really fit in. She’s always been a little too naïve, a little too trusting, and slow to understand the social dynamics that were happening around her; nothing that warranted an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), but something that her peers instantly picked up on. She is super innocent, trusting and authentic. She is like this beautiful innocent sponge, ready to soak up anything near her. She is an old soul.

When she was 10, we moved to the East Coast (from the Midwest) and she started to be bullied in school. After some harrowing bullying situations, we pulled her out of school and her dad homeschooled her for 5 years until she was accepted to a Public Arts high school.

Right before high school, she befriended another homeschooler, a dysfunctional kid who liked to cut himself and do drugs whenever possible. Our daughter started cutting herself. This stopped once she went to high school. She had other friends, but they had been homeschooling together since they were very young, and had already formed a clique; our daughter never found a group that she felt she belonged in.

When she first went to high school (from homeschooling), she hadn’t interacted in a lot of regular schooling social environments since being bullied and pulled out of school.

She started meeting with the school therapist and talking about her discomfort with her breasts. In my mind, this was natural and normal. It’s hard to be a developing teen, and negotiate that along with all the other social stuff. The therapist immediately told her that if she wanted, she could go to therapy at the Children’s hospital for Gender Dysphoria and, eventually, have her breasts removed. Our daughter thought this idea sounded great — it was exciting! And it sounded easy! Maybe THAT was the problem!

I was aghast, especially that mastectomy was one of the first ideas that they would introduce her to. Whatever happened to understanding that our bodies are weird and sometimes uncomfortable and that this a normal part of living in a very dysfunctional world — along with levels of patriarchy in all of this as well? Anyway, our daughter asked her school to call her by a male name, which they readily did.

As she acclimated to school, the name and the discomfort stopped. She never asked her pronouns to change, and then told her school for sophomore and junior year to go ahead and call her by her previous name. Over her school journey, she’s heavily participated in gay parades, the GSA, she came out as bi, dated a super lame dude and broke up with him, got excited about feminism, didn’t really find a lot of friends to connect with — but it was okay. She started clubs for other women to not wear bras on Fridays and support themselves in loving their bodies, interning at a girls’ rock camp, and even helping to implement and then participate in a female-only camping trip in the winter. We saw the Vagina Monologues, and she found it inspiring! She painted vaginas during her painting class. She joined a GLBTQ acting troupe last summer, and acted with them over the summer and fall,  taking a break over the spring.

This last year has been super rough. She was a senior in high school, and between finishing humongous stressful projects, feeling lonely, so much stress about colleges and not getting enough sleep, she started getting down. Part of it was that she would keep herself too busy with projects and not take care of herself. Part of it was that she hadn’t dated anyone in a few years and was feeling isolated. But then in mid-March, she came out to some teachers at school and said that she wasn’t doing as well because she was actually trans and she didn’t know how to handle it anymore. The school was supportive — no questions asked. They automatically changed her name at school, and her pronouns (to he/him/his).

She came out to us. We were skeptical. Everything she said sounded cultish and simplistic — and wrong. One of the reasons she told us that she was trans, was that she always liked Spiderman as a child, and not princesses. She then brought up the male brain. It sounded as though she were reading from a trans-pamphlet. We had so many discussions,  all about how nobody fits neatly into the gender box, and that we could see her not identifying as a female the way that society prescribes the female gender. However, we said, just because you don’t fit neatly into one box does not mean that you should jump into another box. Just because you don’t feel you are “female” doesn’t equate to you being “male.” That there is no such thing as a male brain, that societal definitions of gender are a social construct;  it is “the matrix,”  it doesn’t exist, etc., etc.

She befriended some trans kids from her acting troupe. When you look at this group, each year they are something different. There are kids who, upon joining, are just “allies,” the next year they are bisexual, the next year they are gay, and then the final year, they are trans. And at every step of the way, they are being applauded and receiving so much positive support from themselves, each other, the group, the grownups, and the audiences that they declare this to (I call this the “echo chamber”). But it’s fishy. Why are there so many kids who, the more they hang out, all of a sudden, they are trans too? It doesn’t make sense. It is trans-trending.

Since our daughter came out to us, she has been binding (excessively, but super defensive and refusing to talk to me about it). She has been less happy, secretly packing in front of her sibling, and in her room, surrounding herself with trans music, stories, and friends– and actually, through all this, becoming dysphoric; hating her body– and we’ve never seen any of it before. We had her go to our health center for a therapist, who stated that the best place for our kid was to go to GLBTQ teen space for a trans teen meeting every friday. That’s where we are at, currently.

This all reminds me of when she was cutting herself. I think that there is trauma at the root of her being, perhaps with being bullied, perhaps with being lonely and not finding kinship with others her age, perhaps at the inability to handle and process stress well, perhaps with fear of the future.

Because my kid is 18, she is not beholden to what we say. I can’t make her do anything. I can’t make her not go on the internet. Cutting her off financially or refusing to send her to college isn’t an option. I can’t reach out to most people, or state my concerns publicly, because then I’m being a transphobic parent.  I’ve told her that in my heart of hearts, this is not right, and that I love her and will call her by her new name, and I will use they/them/theirs pronouns, but that I honestly don’t see her any happier. More than anything, I want her to think critically about what she is doing and seeing, and to question her surroundings.

I have no idea what I could be doing differently, how I can really help her anymore. This has all happened within the span of 3 months. I’m hoping she can pull herself out of this madness, but I’m not sure she can. I’m really hoping by meeting all of you, and hearing your stories, that we can support each other, share knowledge and experiences, and build a path together that provides our daughters with a way into accepting themselves as they are.

Because right now I am feeling terrified and isolated.

26 thoughts on “One mother’s story: A teen’s transformation in only 3 months

  1. My heart goes out to this mother and her child. We as parents are in the awful situation wherein the only support our trans children seem accept is that of going along with their trans identity. I had an awful confrontation with my child today when I gently raised the possibility that she might not be trans. I didn’t handle her response well and instead of presenting my supportive, strong self, presented my vulnerable, frightened and pained self. My child made it clear that I have no right to feel this, that me not wanting her to be trans suggests that trans is “bad” and implicit in that was that I am transphobic. This is a horrible place to be, but we are not even allowed to find this place horrible. Anything other that positive and happy acceptance of our trans children is not countenanced.

    • It’s very hard to stay in that strong, calm place all the time as a parent–much less, when we feel our kids are headed down a dangerous road from which they cannot easily turn back (testosterone alone creates permanent changes in a female body–let alone mastectomies and surgeries). And to be vilified on top of it by the transactivists and their media acolytes can sometimes seem like too much to bear.

      But I take some heart from my own reflections on my teen years. I rejected what my parents said then, too, but now their words echo in me daily and inform my choices. I also take heart from the other young women who have written to me, saying that what we are doing on these blogs is helping them to accept themselves as female.

      I’m glad you both came here. We give each other strength, just by sharing our stories.

    • I know I have “lost it” with my daughter as well, even to the point of calling her transgender belief a fantasy. And then, since I was on a roll and had momentum going, I told her that it wasn’t possible for her to change her sex to male. That there is only the option of appearing more masculine, but that she could never change her genetics.

      She didn’t talk to me for a while after that.

      It is a HORRIBLE place to be in as a parent. A no-win situation. I wish I knew what things to say or do that would change her mind. At this age, though, she feels like she knows best. And she is more trusting of strangers online than her parents.

      • I’m at a place now where I think every conversation about it is going to have to be prefaced by the statement: “I am not saying you cannot transition. if that’s the only way you can live in the world, you can definitely transition, and I will always love you and want to have a relationship with you.” Because I think that it has to be said, over and over, before these kids can even listen to any of the other stuff we wish to share with them. You have to keep that door open or they absolutely cannot hear you. Especially if they’re in a subculture that’s telling them you’re the enemy.

        The most upset I’ve ever seen my own kid about this was when I said something like, “You can change how you look but every chromosome in your body is forever going to be an XX pair.” She did all but put her fingers in her ears and go “la la la,” like she used to do when she was little. There are communities where this simple statement of biology would be deemed abusive. You know?

        I am always thinking about how detransitioner Violet Irene has written of her own mother, though, who did not try to hide her maternal grief regarding the situation. I’m always remembering how Violet took that honest maternal emotion as a touchstone that ultimately felt affirming to her. If love can’t be honest, then … we’re lost.

        I can’t be some perfect happy supportive “hey, my kid was always a boy” mom. I really, really wonder if such moms exist in actuality or if they simply say (and blog about, and give interviews about) those things because they believe a good liberal loving person is required to say those things. Saying those things is what is required of a “good mother” and a “good person.” Damn, when did “celebrate your kid’s elective double mastectomy” become a requirement of being a “good mother?” (And you know, we’re women, too — all just trying to get along, keep the peace, be friends with everybody, see the other person’s point of view, soothe the other person’s pain, deflect anger, understand. So if someone starts calling us “phobic” we tend to go off on a tangent of self-examination instead of pushing back. Or at least, I tend to do that.)

      • For the first time today, I read on a Facebook post the raw story of a broken-hearted, angry mother who eventually did kick her child out of the house (at 18). She chronicles trying to talk to her child, but being relentlessly called a TERF and bigot; the child then became aggressive and out of control. The mom bitterly says the child is now completely lost to (what she herself refers to as) the cult. It really struck me, because I have never seen that level of public honesty by a parent of a kid who transitioned. It’s a measure of how successfully we’ve been muzzled by a prostrate media and the rest of the thought police. Speaking out about our true feelings is a start. We all try to be understanding, to get along. But as you say, puzzled, there is a lot of cognitive dissonance required to square our own concept of being a “good mother” with medically unnecessary, disfiguring surgery and drugs that permanently alter the precious bodies of our children. For me, once I learned so much about what’s going on with the transgender thing, I couldn’t turn back. Being honest is also good parenting. I can understand and empathize with how my kid feels. But I cannot endorse her thoughts about this issue. Not anymore.

  2. can you possibly fund a private therapy for her….not associated with LGBT groups or school? the internet is toxic, but my sibling found lots of materials in 1968. there have been groups around, funded by wealthy trans-identified people, and they are very active.
    good luck to you. you are in my thoughts, as young people can be very impressionable. bon courage!

  3. Reblogged this on amethyst menace and commented:
    This is so common now, it’s a nightmare. I keep meeting women who, when I explain I’m detransitioning and why, tell me they have a niece, a friend’s daughter, a sister considering cross-sex mutilation. The true believer transgenderists NEED female bodies for the agenda, because by mutilating us and putting us on display they can market directly to misogyny & lesbophobia.

  4. So glad to hear I am not alone. My daughter is heading down this path and sometimes I feel paralyzed with fear for her.

    • That description doesn’t make clear that there is no such thing as a “male” or “female” brain. It’s OK as a description, but the analysis is weak.

      Simply failing to take on board all the pink-princess-subservient (ie gender) brainwashing does not make a girl really a boy or have a boys brain. It makes her a human who (for one reason or another) has not totally absorbed the demands of her sex role as dictated by our culture. She is gender non-conforming only in as much as the pink-wash didn’t take. She is still a girl and still has female biology.

      A girl behaving as an “unfeminine” girl is marked as abnormal, the culture says general human interests are for boys not girls. Boys behaviour is human behaviour, how dare a girl be like that !

      Trying to navigate while growing is difficult, the pressure to take on a role which doesn’t make sense can be interpreted by the young and vunerable to mean they are wrong and need to change themselves – rather than the fact that the roles actually don’t make sense ! Gender is there to dehumanise women, and some of us didn’t quite get with the programme on that, but it is perfectly possible to live in the world as a “different” girl or woman – that is truly “being yourself”

      • Not related to aspregers directly but this highlights one of the big differences between actual non-conforming girls and fetishistic men.

        On one hand is female persons who are failing to perform a subservient role, and have ordinary human interests instead (which they interpret as some sort of personal pathology even though it isn’t, in extreme cases with transition an attempt to escape that)

        on the other is men who pathologically glorify and revel in the social roles to the point that transition enhances their fetish. They are conformists to gender and are worshipped for it.

  5. 4thwavenow– First, thanks for this page! Great idea, so needed.

    Otherwise, above you mentioned reading one mother’s story, saying: “For the first time today, I read on a Facebook post the raw story of a broken-hearted, angry mother who eventually did kick her child out of the house (at 18).” Just wanted to say that I’m pretty sure you’re talking about my fb comment on a mutual friend’s page…and that I kicked my son out about 6wks short of his 17th birthday.

    He immediately filed for legal emancipation (which I did not oppose)–and raised funds to get into his new place through a Gofundme–a story of being kicked out for being transgender by his TERF mom. Of course, he knew full well that for the previous couple of years I’d told him that he could live in my home so long as he did his chores and demonstrated basic respect for me. We didn’t have to agree on all things, it was ok to argue at times–but I would not live with anyone who exploited my labors and my love by failing to do a fair share of chores, or who disrespected me via verbal abuse, etc.

    As ds well knew, he’d been violating those basic requirements on and off since about age 13, which is when I first laid down the law. Mostly we got on very well and he was fairly reliable–but he was getting worse since about 6mos before he decided he was transgender, and way worse from the time he came out. Once he came out, his arrogance, defiance and entitlement went off the charts, along with gaslighting…ohmygawd the gaslighting! He lied to me and about me to others, stole from me and then minimized it all, talked about my ‘abuse’ of him.

    When he came out to me, I was supportive, except that I would not agree that he’d ‘always been truly female on the inside’. I affirmed my love for him, told him he could dress/present as he pleased (reminding him of my own lifelong gender disobedience and how I’d raised all my kids not to feel trapped by gender rules) and that I would learn to call him ‘daughter’, ‘she’, etc. But I also told him that I did not believe anyone was ‘really a sex on the inside’ that differed from their biological sex; I could respect *his belief in that, however. This was unacceptable. His behavior became worse and worse, I was living with an enemy who expected to be provided for while he did as he pleased.

    And as I told him–“Anything I take issue with, you say it’s only because I hate your being transgender.” (never mind sitting on the web all day when I’m working, failing to bring in firewood before a storm hits). It was along this way that he mentioned our need to talk about “how to get along while you fulfill your obligation to me until I’m 18”. It was clearly a veiled legal threat–and not his first but definitely his last.

    I was like “are you fucking kidding me???? *I* have rights too! I could take you down to the police station right now, and tell them I have no control over you–you’d be put in foster care. Don’t you DARE assume I’m obligated to put up with your hateful behavior. We will share a home out of love, and in cooperation, or we will NOT SHARE A HOME.” It was soon after this that I kicked him out.

    By that time, my grown kids (one still local) knew what was going on and a couple of them had offered to take him in. I even passed along the child support from his bio-dad to the dd who first took him in. When I discovered his gofundme page, and his libel and fraud in raising $$ to get his own place, that stopped along with any further communication between us.

    Apart from dealing with the business related matters of him taking on his own life, we’ve not talked in 5 months. I grieve the loss of my son to the transcult, and I fear so much for his future, especially his physical health should he start hormones or surgery. But my anger is for patriarchy, the author of this whole mess. Our children are being placed at such enormous risk by patriarchy in yet a new way, our families torn apart–all to support delusions of gender, regardless of how destructive that is.

  6. 4thwave, that’s a tough story about the mom now estranged from her FTM kid. It’d take some thing very extreme for me to ‘kick my kid out’ — but I’d be lying if I said I were not concerned about the mood side effects of T, which are well documented. My kid already has a long history of anger-management issues and obsessive behaviors, and right now we have achieved a state of hard-won peace, through many years of mutual emotional work. It’d be so sad to me to see that deteriorate due to T-induced mood changes.

    I’m committed to fulfilling my responsibility to see her through a college education, unless she really goes off the rails and it becomes pointless, you know? But before she decides to go down the T path (if she does), we’re going to have to have some frank discussions about situations where we might ask her to live apart from us. I’d pay for her housing, as long as a decent effort at school is still going on, but I’m not going to live with a volatile and aggressive kid. There are other people in the family, with other needs, to consider.

      • No, MTF. I’m not sure where anyone got the idea my son is FTM. He is MTF. He not only was not taking testosterone, he was not (as far as I knew at the time) taking estrogen, either. It was his natural male testosterone–compounded of course by institutional misogyny– fueling his nasty behavior.

    • So many of the accounts I’ve read from detransitioned FTMs talk about the increased anger and irritability they experienced while on testosterone. And a few people I follow still consider themselves FTM, but stopped “T” specifically because they felt numbed and insensitive to others. They talk about not being able to cry on testosterone, and of their emotional lives becoming re-enriched after they stop injecting. Seems like a big price to pay that some decide is not worth it after awhile.

      • You know what, I have to say — I am trying hard to keep the mental door open to the notion that transition could work for my kid, that it could result in a happier person. If you could show me some decent data indicating that she was not trading some of her years away for this, or putting herself at significant risk of physical and psychological problems, I’d be way quicker to sign off, you know? Despite the gender-critical ramifications, I’d still be quicker to sign off. I’m not a very political person. Minimal feminist, long married, certainly not any kid of rad. (OK, now I’m getting more rad. But I digress.)

        And I know some people are so miserable that they would willingly trade some life for some relief. When a person’s an adult, that is a choice the person gets to make. And when my kid’s an adult, that will be a choice my kid will also get to make. Even if it makes me sad, because the whole trans thing really doesn’t appear to work out that well long term for a lot of natal women. Some, I guess, do find that it was right for them.

        For a minor, though? In good conscience, cannot sign off. That is way too big a decision to make on my kid’s behalf. (She’s an adoptee. She’s already had plenty of decisions made for her. You know? Getting this one wrong could have damn big consequences. I can’t shoulder this decision on top of all the other decisions that have been made for her.)

  7. 4thwavenow, thank you for giving space to people to speak about this. I keep hoping that at some point more people will realise what is going on and just how unacceptable and downright abusive the trans agenda is. Meanwhile “lgbt” organisations, the media, govern
    ment agencies, therapists, bigpharma are on the side of the creepy (and also well resourced) men who keep pushing these abuses.

    I wish I could know what to say to help the parents in these situations, it is indeed like trying to get your kids out of a cult, a very destructive one unfortunately.

    • The LGBT organizations now seem to mostly be catering to the “T.” And I see this site as a first step in helping parents. At least they know they’re not alone. If the rest of society saw this as a cult, it would be a lot easier, but as we know, the rest of society seems to be either sleeping through it, or actively supporting it. Although judging from the number of negative comments that appear on nearly every online “news” story I read (usually uncritical cheerleading for the transgender narrative), there are a lot of frustrated and skeptical people out there…

      • Charlie Manson used the popularity of the hippy culture [special magical children] to rally teens in California to his cause. He was extremely popular and young people were protesting at his trial. Adults over 30 and squares could see he was just a manipulative pimp that used children. I was not around then but I read about this in a class about State history. Here is an archived LA weekly article, the judge that presided over the case has just died, but Charlie Manson studied Scientology, but learned his most effective techniques by studying from Dale Carnegie’s book- How to Win Friends and Influence People, he even enrolled in a Carnegie course that was offered in LA
        He used the techniques on kids in the free-love movement to commit crimes for him even after he was incarcerated. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3053950/posts

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