The following letter was submitted by “Sleepless Parent,” the mother of a boy who recently announced he is transgender.
Dear well-meaning relatives,
Yes, you. The ones who, when my son abruptly “came out” as transgender on his Facebook page, sent him a quick message of support and encouragement, and then promptly got on with your own lives without a second thought. Then when I offered to share just a page or two of the vast research I had done during many sleepless nights, you quite bluntly told me that you couldn’t be bothered to read it.
Perhaps you can’t be bothered to read this letter either. But since you claim to care about my son and his well-being, let me share with you his future that you are so blithely supporting.
The fit, perfectly healthy young man who never needed to see a doctor will now be a medical patient for the rest of his life. He will be taking extremely high doses of off-label drugs. These drugs may make him permanently sterile.
This drug regimen that he will be on forever, which you seem to believe is “safe,” comes with the risk of all of these side effects: [1][2][3]
- Brain aneurysm
- Deep venous thrombosis (DVT)
- Pulmonary embolism
- Cardiovascular disease
- Pancreatic cancer
- Liver disease
- Gall stones
- Kidney failure
- Type 2 diabetes
- Hypertension
- Pituitary gland tumors
- Breast cancer
In addition, as a male-to-female transgender his risk of contracting HIV is now 50 times higher than the general population.[4]
He will spend tens of thousands of dollars for painful surgeries, each one of which carries with it the risk of serious complications, up to and including death. If he goes through with the genital mutilation euphemistically referred to as gender reassignment surgery, the best outcome he can hope for is a long, painful recovery and a need to dilate the “neovagina” with a dildo-like apparatus every day for the rest of his life. However, there is a high probability of complications, which can range from such “minor” issues as bleeding, a putrid smell, or trouble urinating, to far more serious complications such as a fistula tear, a complication which can result in wearing a colostomy bag for life.[5][6]
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that none of this plethora of scenarios happens, and he ingests enough drugs and undergoes enough surgeries in order to successfully “pass” as a woman. His gender dysphoria will finally be cured, right? No, even after he has reconstructed his body to be “congruent” with what his mind believes, the possibility that he will attempt suicide actually increases with time, and can be up to 19 times higher than the average person. [7]
So, dear relatives, by telling me that I should be “supportive” of his transition, you are actually telling me that I should be encouraging my child to increase the likelihood that he will suffer serious life-threatening diseases or commit suicide.
So please – back off. Because you’re not the ones who will be there for him when someone has to pick up the pieces – that will be me, his “hateful, transphobic” parent.
Thank you.
References
[1] Appendix B, pages 97-100
https://web.archive.org/web/20120920085610/http://www.wpath.org/documents/SOC%20V7%2003-17-12.pdf
[2] Pages 12-15
Click to access hormones-MTF.pdf
[3]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25415740
[4]
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/gender/transgender/index.html
[5] Warning: graphic surgical pictures
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1677-55382012000100014
[6]
http://www.bilerico.com/2010/06/sex_reassignment_surgery_when_things_go_wrong.php
[7]
People constantly compare it to coming out as gay, as if all the drugs and surgeries and special products have anything in common with what gay teens need when they come out.
Yep, that’s what people who support this garbage fantasize that they’re doing. They’re being really super gay positive. As if it’s 1972, and they are a pioneer of being pro gay! More fantasists.
Refresh my memory, what exactly are the products that gay teenagers need in order to be gay?
*crickets*
Reblogged this on Stop Trans Chauvinism.
Totally happened in my family. While it was painful and I felt terribly betrayed, the silver lining was two-fold — it was a family member by marriage and a week later a divorce was in the works and every other family member and friend we’ve spoken to has listened and supports US in the way we are choosing to handle the situation.
I wish that for all the rest of you — that the vast majority of people in your lives who love and know you and your children are supportive and that the ones who DON’T get it are few and easy to ignore.
I actually agree 110% with ‘sleepless parent’. What these cautionary studies show is that these extremely drastic measures should only be considered as a last resort.
If I may just ask Worried, at what stage does one reach the a decision to take the ”last resort”? I agree with what you say, by the way. Have you ever, or would you ever express that opinion within the ”trans community” ? I am genuinely curious and not being judgmental. Thanks.
I have given up trying. It is not a popular opinion and expessing it subjects one to all sorts of abuse and accusations of intorance
If you believe in brainsex and that transition is “becoming your true self,” then the congrats are apropos. If you believe the kid is grappling with a mental health issue, then congratulating the kid is as weird as congratulating someone who announces they have been dx’d with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or anorexia or major depressive disorder.
Personally I believe the situation is of the latter variety, especially knowing what I know about my own kid’s prior mental health history. But the social push is all for the “true self” narrative and the “progressive” “attaboy” or “attagirl” response.
Frankly I feel like I have a lot more in common with the anorexic kid’s parent than with the parent whose kid comes out as gay/lesbian. Or the drug addict’s parent. Or parents over the course of history whose kids are making unhealthy decisions due to disordered thinking of various kinds.
Yes, puzzled, it seems we should have more in common with an anorexic’s parent, except that those parents are supported by other parents to help their kids recover, not continue being anorexic. This is why we feel so ostracized. Parents of drug addicts and anorexics at least has pity from the rest of society. Not that I want pity, I just want understanding and not accusations of abuse. When I speak up at meetings people start squirming in their seats and giving me dirty looks. I don’t care anymore, but I also don’t want to waste my time with them.
I don’t think most people are aware of the many medical aspects of a transition, let alone the risks. The media doesn’t show us a transkid on blockers who is experiencing side effects or a trans grown-up dealing with complications from a surgical procedure. If an adult considers all of these factors and decides to go ahead with a medical transition anyhow, that’s up to them. But kids and teens are too young to weigh all of that information and come to a decision about it.
I could have written this letter myself, as the mother of a MTF teen…all but the last bit. I probably will not be there to pick up the pieces. That’s because, knowing my radical feminist beliefs, my son–with the support of my libfem daughter, a few others close to him and of course, the online transborg–pre-determined that I was a hateful transphobe before he ever came out to me. His behavior, starting before he came out (but I’m pretty sure he was already heading there) and way more once he did come out, was relentlessly vile. The kid who–until shortly before all this–talked with me about everything (including sexuality and gender), no longer speaks to me. He moved out just before his 17th birthday and obtained emancipation in the week following his birthday (with my consent). His last communication to me was an email in which he declared that he would “*never agree to disagree” with me about TGism, and would only reconcile with me once I’d “totally recanted [my] transphobic beliefs” and “completely accepted [him] as [my] daughter”.
I had to tell him that it was completely unfair that he make a demand for anything *from me, that he did believe he owed *to me. That mutual relationships cannot exist where one party requires the other to give up their understanding of life.
In any event, the people being there for him now are 4 out of 5 his siblings (all older by 5yrs up to 20yrs) and the rest of the extended family. They have all mindlessly accepted and approved his ‘coming out to his true self’, and applaud his every porny selfie, sympathize with his every post about things like ‘bras suck’. His 4 sibs don’t speak to me, nor to the one sister who still does speak to me–she made the mistakes of misgendering my son one time, plus she (while supportive of her bro as a person) asks such heretical questions as “can’t there be a 3rd and 4th gender? I accept that he doesn’t see himself as male, but I don’t see how it makes sense for him to take such extreme measure to become female”. I’ll send the link to this letter to them all, in the hopes that *someone in that crowd will check it out, and help keep him from destroying his wondrously healthy body in the name of this delusional, destructive fad.
I dreamed of him and his sibs last night, and woke myself crying. There are not enough tears.
Thanks as ever for this blog.
I’m so, so sorry. That is just a horrible situation. I hope for everyone’s sake that he softens and matures and realizes he never even gave you a chance.
thanks… I hope so too. And I hope this happens before he’s very far down the transition road–his intentions to transition medically were declared in that same email, although previously he’d told me he was not intending that. It was only a few months before he changed his mind. I have no idea what’s going on for him now.
Also I noticed a typo in my comment…perhaps obvious, but I should have said in 2nd paragraph “that he did NOT believe he owed *to me”.
I feel for you, womywise 1. This could happen to any of us. What a crazy messed up world we live in. Is everyone just a robot? I feel like we’re under some kind of gag order. I will also have to get to a conversation with my daughter someday to “agree to disagree”, when she’s old enough to be able to talk reasonable with me about this – if that time ever comes.
Right now she’s saying that she won’t apply for college until her name is officially changed and that all I have to do is sign the papers. I told her that her new identity is her baby, I already had mine and gave it a name once. If she has to wait a year to be able to apply, then that’s her choice. I put the burden on her now. Also, I found out that most universities where I’m living in Canada accept students “preferred” names to use, so really the name change is not an issue.
Sleepless Parent writes, “the genital mutilation euphemistically referred to as gender reassignment surgery”.
The same day her letter was posted here, Channel 4 News (UK) ran a special feature on female genital mutilation. (Yes, the same Channel 4 that is currently mindlessly and harmfully spreading the concept of ‘Born In The Wrong Body’. Anybody spot the disconnect? And ‘semantic contagion’!).
FGM is illegal in Britain. They showed a clip of Prime Minister David Cameron declaring, ‘Parents who take their children for female genital mutilation, I want them arrested.’
They interviewed women who had fled to the UK to escape FGM, often to protect their daughters. One was the daughter of a ‘cutter’, who said tradition dictated she would have to become a cutter, too, and that she would be made to carry out FGM on her own daughter if she were refused asylum and made to return to her native country.
The sympathetic interviewer asked what she would do ‘if you were told you had to return home?’
‘No. I wouldn’t go. I’d kill myself.
For me to have to cut my daughter – I’d never do that. I’d prefer to end it all.’
This is the same media company that trendily endorses children and teens being persuaded to mutilation of their genitals and other sex characteristics in the name of the cult of ‘gender’. And what do they label parents who feel that same strongly protective instinct about their children’s physical integrity and wholeness, where transgenderism is concerned? Who are sleepless over their children’s prospects of physical and mental health, and of finding a place of belonging and genuine self-acceptance in their future lives?
I think we know.
The dam has to break. People have to start to see what is actually happening to children and young people in THIS culture, through failing to question our OWN culture’s presumptions.
“In addition, as a male-to-female transgender his risk of contracting HIV is now 50 times higher than the general population. [. . . ] [E]ven after he has reconstructed his body to be “congruent” with what his mind believes, the possibility that he will attempt suicide actually increases with time, and can be up to 19 times higher than the average person.”
The risks of contracting HIV and of suicidality are comparably elevated for gay/bi males. Would the reaction be similar in that case?