Lily Maynard lives with her husband and their family in the UK. Her daughter, Jessie, was 15 when she first began identifying as trans.
In this post, Lily chronicles her grueling journey of self education on trans issues, and her determination to share what she learned with Jessie, who at first utterly dismissed her mother’s efforts. But after 9 months, Jessie, now 16, eventually desisted from trans identification, and, with the support of her mother and another formerly trans-identified friend, came to recognize and embrace herself as a young woman.
Jessie adds her own observations at the end of her mother’s post.
Lily and Jessie are both available to interact with readers in the comments section of this post.
by Lily Maynard
My daughter Jessie was not a ‘girly’ girl. As a small child she was often mistaken for a boy, despite her long hair, because mostly she wore jeans and dinosaur tops. She didn’t care much for the pastel, glitter, hearts and lace that tends to fill the girls’ section of most stores. Growing up, she liked Dora the Explorer and Ben 10; she liked Lego and Bratz dolls. Occasionally, she chose a pink sparkly top, or a crystal ballerina for the Christmas tree.
Once, when she was about 7, a woman in a second-hand shop said to her, “Oh you’re a GIRL! Why are you playing with that dirty old truck? Here’s a nice doll.”
So I bought her the truck to make a point, and on the way home we talked about how silly it was to have different toys for boys and girls. We always applauded the strong women in movies and cartoons. My kids would tell me, “Mum, you’d like this film, there’s a Strong Female Role in it.”
Jessie played with both boys and girls growing up; she had siblings; she was sociable; she had a wide circle of friends. She did ballet for half a term, but tripped over her feet and hated it. She tried football, but tripped over her feet and hated getting up early. She liked jujitsu and roller skating, drawing and writing stories. She hated skirts and dresses and tomatoes.
By age 12, she was spending a lot of time online. She had a Facebook account and loved YouTube, music videos, cat videos; Naruto and Hannah Montana. She hung out mostly with a small group of close girlfriends, but mixed well with anyone. At 13 she had her own iPhone and laptop, and worshipped One Direction. At 14, she began watching videos by lesbian YouTubers Rose and Rosie, and ElloSteph. For the most part, I liked them. These young women were funny, happy and confident, and they gave out good life advice. Their videos were well composed, although there was a bit too much of the obligatory YouTube navel-gazing for my liking.
Jessie, slightly goth, long dyed dark hair and occasional black eyeliner, always in jeans and a band T shirt, Jessie came out as gay just before her 15th birthday . I wasn’t surprised. She’d briefly ‘dated’ a boy she’d known since she was five but it was obviously no great passion, so I had suspected she was going to tell me weeks before she did. Shortly afterwards she made a ‘coming out’ YouTube video and posted it on her Facebook page. She said she was ‘gay’; she didn’t use the word ‘lesbian’. I did think she was quite young to define her sexuality so suddenly and utterly, and declare it to the world before she had even had a relationship. By this time, I was very aware of the part YouTube youth culture played in the decision to ‘go public’ with a video. I told her that, but I wasn’t shocked or discouraging. I had a few girlfriends myself when I was younger. If she was a lesbian, so be it. I just wanted her to be happy and healthy.
Soon thereafter, Jessie began watching ‘transitioning’ videos on YouTube with her friends and siblings: cute boys who became girls and cute girls who became boys; endless slideshows of their stories, entitled, ‘My Transition Timeline’.
The girls all had the same sideways smiles and little bum-fluff beards. “I never liked pink,” they declared, “I never liked dresses, I wasn’t attracted to boys. I wore guy clothing.” The boys twisted their long hair as they spoke through heavily lipsticked lips, leaning forward coyly and peering out from over-mascara’ed lashes. “I always liked pink,” they cooed, “I played with girls’ toys.” I wondered why this generation seemed desperate to put itself into boxes and mark them with labels, but mostly I worried that my kids were spending too much time online.
“Read a book; go outside!” was my mantra. “Turn off the internet and put down your phone.”
Jessie took me to a YouTube convention and we sat at the front during the LGBT discussion. She had a crush on a high-profile teen who identified as a boy. Chris was on hormones and had had a double mastectomy. Chris was kind to Jessie at the ‘meet and greet’ afterwards and posed for a photo. I didn’t see Chris as a boy, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. What I do remember was those eyes, like a frightened rabbit, a frail little thing despite the smiles.
Jessie asked to cut her long hair short. I said, “Of course.” I was surprised how much it suited her. We donated her hair to the Little Princess Trust, to be made into wigs for children with cancer.
Jessie still had her phone 24/7. I ‘trusted’ her, despite knowing that many of her friends were online half the night. I knew some of them self-harmed, or starved themselves, or posted half-naked pictures online. I know now that it isn’t about trust. No one ever thinks their child is doing that stuff. Social media cliques are like a spiral, ever more insular and self-serving. They are more than the sum of the parts of their users. The internet can be a great source of support, but whole online communities have grown up to normalise disturbing behaviours: from the personification of eating disorders with Ana and Mia, through forums where kids discuss who cuts the deepest or most frequently. If my bright, happy child was vulnerable, anybody’s child can be vulnerable. You can’t ‘trust’ your child not to get drawn into a cult, any more than you can trust them not to get run over by a truck.
A month after cutting her hair, Jessie said she had something to tell me. She was distraught, red-faced and bleary-eyed. There was a tiny part of me that knew what she was going to say, although I didn’t realise it until later. After almost an hour of pacing the room she grabbed a pen and wrote on a scrap of paper, ‘I am transgender’.
Despite having half-known what she was going to say, I was shocked. I had heard of people who said they’d always known they were ‘in the wrong body’ but there had never been anything in Jessie’s past to suggest that might be the case with her. She insisted the signs had always been there. She hated wearing dresses, she used male avatars in video games, she didn’t want to flirt with boys. She didn’t ‘feel’ like a girl.
“Do you want to go on hormones?” I asked, at one point during that first conversation. “You’d grow a beard.” I added, pointlessly.
She nodded. She never mentioned surgery, but I saw it looming in her future. The prospect terrified me. I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “It’ll be ok.”
She seemed much happier after telling me and then went to bed, a million miles away, in her room next to mine. I went to bed too, and the darkness screamed at me. I got up again, and spent the night googling ‘transgender’ and crying. I tried to be open-minded. I wanted to support Jessie more than anything; to do the best thing to help her, but I was sure transition wasn’t the answer she needed. I told myself I was open-minded, but was I really? Was I in denial? I slept very little over the following weeks.
I spoke to a lesbian friend, in a panic. “What does he want to do next?” she inquired. I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
One of the first places I looked for information was the National Health Service website, because I presumed there would be impartial advice: something about helping people with the issue of reconciling their bodies with their identity. I thought that thinking you were transgender would be treated as a mental health issue; surely transition would be recommended as a last resort.
I typed ‘NHS transgender’ into Google, and the first article that appeared was the story of a boxing promoter who came out as transgender at age 60; about his ‘dreams, diaries and dress-ups’. A link on that site led to the children’s trans support group, ‘Mermaids’. which is run by parents who believe their children are born in the wrong bodies. Their advice to confused teens, in the section ‘I think I’m trans, what do I do?’ is ‘you can speak to your GP without your parents being able to know if you are not comfortable with coming out to them yet.’ Next, I flipped through the testimonials from parents. Mermaids receives UK lottery funding and is often the first port of call for concerned parents in the UK. As far as I could tell, every single child mentioned on the site has transitioned.
Another link on the NHS transgender page led me to a glossy brochure called ‘Living my Life’, featuring studio photos of good-looking transgender people. It struck me as more of an advert for plastic surgery than an information booklet.
A spikey-haired 20-something plays a guitar and shouts into the camera. ’We’re here for a good time, not a long time.’ A coiffed and manicured blonde wears a low-cut salmon pink top, and a pair of surgically enhanced breasts take up most of the bottom half of the picture. ’I was always me but I just didn’t look like me.’
There was nothing on either of those two links about helping kids to reconcile with their natal sex. Nothing about working through it; nothing about learning to love yourself as you are. I saw nothing stating the obvious: that a healthy natal boy has a penis and testicles and a healthy natal girl has a vulva and vagina, and that both sexes should be able to do all the things they love while wearing whatever damn outfit takes their fancy.
I typed ‘Am I transgender?’ into Google and clicked on the link to amitransgender.com. One word filled the screen: a black YES on a white background.
“I want to change my pronouns,” Jessie announced. “I’m a boy in a girl’s body.”
“How can you know what a boy feels like, when you’re a girl?” I demanded.
She couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
“You’re a girl,” I insisted. “You can do anything as a girl, achieve anything as a girl that you could if you were a boy, but you can’t just become a boy any more than you can become a cat. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Go away.”
My eyes were opened over the next few weeks. Staying up most of the night, every night, Google led me beyond YouTube, to Reddit, to Tumblr, to Pinterest and Instagram. To posts about pink, clothing, hair and make-up. To seemingly endless pictures and slideshows of men, dressed like pornstars, claiming to be women. Vague explanations about ‘feeling’ different; about ‘being yourself’. It led me to videos of girls in checked shirts with cute quiffs and bound breasts, who genuinely believed they were gay men. They talked of ‘gender identity’ and the sex they’d been ‘assigned at birth’, as if births were attended by a gender fairy who absent-mindedly distributed random gifts of genitalia. A huge amount of importance was attached to public bathroom access and locker rooms of one’s choice. Endless posts claiming, in all seriousness, that ‘misgendering’ transpeople is an act of violence tantamount to trying to kill them, and how the only way to stop the feeling of dysphoria is to embrace transition and start living as your ‘preferred gender’. Immediately. There is no shortage of gender therapists offering to help a child do that, because if you even suspect you might be trans, then you probably are. Type ‘child gender therapist UK’ into Google and you get over 15 million results.
Everywhere I looked, the internet seemed eager to affirm that transition was a simple and marvellous thing, the one and only solution to all the problems of physical and social dysphoria. If you don’t support your child’s transition, parents are warned over and over again, they will probably try to kill themselves.
I learned a lot. I learned that if you don’t believe a man can become a woman; if you are gender critical, you will be called a TERF, transphobic and told to ‘educate yourself’ at best; ‘die in a fire’ at worst. I became familiar with the term ‘die cis scum’ (‘cis’ are non-trans people). I learned that if you are a lesbian who doesn’t want to give fellatio, you are transphobic. You may be called a cisbian and you are responsible for the ‘cotton ceiling’. Men get pregnant and you should say ‘chestfeeding’ not ‘breastfeeding’. Vulva cupcakes are violent. Women who menstruate should be called ‘menstruators’ so as not to trigger transwomen who cannot menstruate, or transmen who don’t wish to be reminded that they do. The term ‘female genital mutilation’ is ‘cis sexist’. Often, middle-aged people with names like Misty or Crystal will be the ones helpfully explaining this to confused ‘non-binary’ youngsters. If your child thinks they’re trans, there are a host of interested adults out there. They’ll help you select underwear, they’ll advise you to start transition as early as you can. Some will advise you to keep your feelings from your parents because they may become ‘crazy, hateful people’ if you come out to them. Worried siblings are told to keep quiet if they don’t want suicide on their hands. A few clicks will get you tips on how to get a binder without your parents knowing; some sites will even post you a second-hand binder for free. Tips on how to get hold of hormones illegally online and how to get ‘top surgery’ quicker by lying to a therapist are just a few clicks away.
I started taking Jessie’s phone away at night.
Here’s the thing – teenagers are dysphoric. Dysphoria is defined as ‘a state of unease or generalised dissatisfaction with life’ and that just about sums up being a teenager for a lot of kids. Many teenagers feel they aren’t in the right place, the right life, the right time. It is not such a huge leap, especially for a lesbian girl, to conclude that she is in the wrong body. Transkids call the name their parents gave them at birth their ‘deadname’. The appeal is clear. Society demands such impossible things from our youth. Our boychildren are expected to be tough, to ‘man up’, to scorn women yet acquire them, to value money and power above everything else. Is it any wonder if they shirk from what they are told is manhood? And if it is hard for them, it is so much worse for our girls. They are faced with endless images of airbrushed physical perfection in a society where women are told they can ‘have it all’ but are everywhere portrayed as constantly sexually available and intellectually and physically inferior. We are raising our girls in a society where women still earn nearly 20% less than men for the same work hours; where online porn is only a click away; where a third of young women age 18-24 report being sexually abused in childhood and only one in twenty reported rapes ends in a conviction. Is it really any wonder when young women want to cut off not just their hair but their breasts and fantasise about emerging, as if from a chrysalis, to join men in their position of power and privilege?
“Gender is a social construct.” I repeated. “You are a biological girl. You can have no idea what it feels like to be a boy, because you aren’t a boy. Being a girl doesn’t have to dictate what you like to do, or wear, or who you love.”
She said, “I’m a boy.”
“No, you are a girl.”
“You can’t tell me how I feel.”
I worried myself sick that, at almost 16, my child was only a few months away from being able to visit a doctor privately and start hormone treatment. In fact, as I later learned, some UK children are receiving cross-sex hormones from private doctors as young as 12.
When I first started my research into transgenderism online, I could find nothing that questioned the trans narrative. Everything said transition was the answer, the only answer. Then I found 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend and Gender Critical Dad. Those websites were saving lights in the blue glow of my laptop on those sleepless nights. From there I was led to others who questioned Transtopia. I read, with a mixture of relief and dismay, articles showing the huge increase in young people identifying as ‘trans’ and presenting to gender clinics in the last few years. Those most likely to be sucked in seemed to be white, middle class girls who spent compulsive amounts of time on social media. I read blog posts by thissoftspace and crashchaoscats. I watched YouTube videos by the inspirational Peachyoghurt. I read Sheila Jeffreys’ ‘Gender Hurts’. I joined online radical feminist groups and met wonderful women full of love and anger who taught me a lot. I read stories about five year old children transitioning, and about parents discovering their child had ‘changed pronouns’ at school months ago, but the school had a policy not to discuss the issue with parents. I saw picture books encouraging children to question if they were born the ‘right’ sex. I read about a woman who started a fundraiser for ‘top surgery’ for her disabled daughter who was hospitalised in an intensive care unit. I watched videos where young boys donned false eyelashes and lipstick and curled their long hair, and told the world that they were really girls, while their parents held the cameras that broadcast their lives to the world via their own YouTube channels. Trans-identifying Jazz Jennings stars in a reality TV show. I read about MTT (male to trans) boxers hospitalising women in fights, about MTT golfers who suddenly became world champions, about middle-aged MTT playing on girls’ basketball teams. And I read story upon story about women and girls being assaulted in bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons and refuges, by men who identified as women and used the privilege that gave them to invade women’s spaces. In all my internet surfing, I never found a single story about an MTT being attacked in a men’s restroom.
I showed Jessie a graph that registered the sweeping rise in girls identifying as trans over the last decade. She seemed somewhat subdued by that.
“A woman can’t become a man, it’s impossible.” I reasoned. “How can your body be wrong but your brain be right?”
She repeated, “I’m in the wrong body.”
We went round in circles. And then, in my Internet wanderings, I discovered ‘Jake’.
Jessie had created an elaborate online persona as a transboy, as Jake. As the story slowly unravelled, I discovered that Jessie hadn’t met her new girlfriend, Beth, at a party, as she had told me. Instead, they had met online, and as far as Beth was concerned, she had a boyfriend, a transboy called Jake. As far as Beth was concerned, Jessie Maynard didn’t exist.
I was devastated, I was lost, I was furious. We’d had a strict ‘no fake profiles online’ rule and she had broken it, and then had lied to me.
“It’s not a fake profile,” she yelled, as she slammed her bedroom door. “It’s me!”
I changed the internet passwords and I bought her a ‘brick phone’, a phone without internet access. She was not impressed.
But I didn’t try to stop Jessie seeing Beth, or any of her other friends. Beth lived two hours away from us, but I paid Jessie’s train fare to visit her fortnightly, and gave her back her old phone to FaceTime most evenings. I was touched when Jessie wanted me to meet Beth, and I took them out for dinner. I had mixed feelings. On one level I felt the relationship was reinforcing her confusion. On another I felt it might help clear it. Yet I was horrified that Jessie had created this online world, slipped so easily inside and pulled it back into reality with her. There were others calling her Jake now, friends she had met online, and a few ‘IRL’ friends. Even some of her friends’ parents, I discovered, used the new name and pronouns.
“Do you think Beth really sees you as a boy?” I questioned, one afternoon.
“Yes.” Jessie didn’t look up from her book.
“Really?”
“She says if that’s how I identify, that’s how she sees me.” Jessie looked up this time, and seemed a little uncertain. “I have wondered about that,” she admitted.
Sometimes I would sit with her, coaxing her to explain how she felt, trying so hard to understand how she thought she really could be a boy; telling her what a talented and creative person she was and what a great life she had ahead of her.
Sometimes I couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Whatever you do to yourself you will always be a woman,” I shouted, exasperated. “Do you want a life where everyone around you creeps about pretending they think you’re something you’re not? Do you want to spend the rest of your life on hormones? Do you want a half-beard, phantom breasts, a life based on a lie?”
Sometimes she would not speak to me at all. And I didn’t blame her.
As I’ve said, the internet told me repeatedly that my child might kill herself if I questioned this new identity or whether transition was the best response to her feelings. I didn’t believe it. Jessie did not seem suicidal. Angry and confused, yes. There seemed to be no space for question, no one out there to tell these kids they might be ok as they are – that it was society’s expectations of what makes a man or a woman that should change, not them. This self-diagnosed condition seemed to be accepted without question by most therapists and health professionals.
I started a Facebook group just for Jessie and me, where I posted blog links, news articles and reports I found online, and checked if she had read them by bringing them up in conversation.
Sometimes I’d say, “You can have your phone to call Beth after you’ve read that article.”
Or, “I’ll wash up, you go and look at that video.”
Many of the links I shared with her explained gender as a social construct. Some unravelled the myth that our brains are gendered; some discussed what makes a woman a woman. Many linked FTT (female to trans) transgenderism to male domination, some discussed internalised misogyny. I made sure she knew that detransition was ‘a thing’ and that detransitioners were rejected by the community that had encouraged them to transition in the first place. Sometimes we read articles or watched videos together. She rolled her eyes a lot but didn’t seem to mind too much.
I read everything I could get my hands on. I stayed up most of the night, most nights, reading and copying and pasting appropriate links for Jessie to read. It was easier than lying in the dark, thinking about my perfect child removing her breasts a few years down the line. I learned about breast binders and the problems they can cause. I learned that the facial hair produced by testosterone often remains even if hormones are stopped. I googled pictures that I now wish I could unsee. A pre-op torso sporting breasts and chest hair. Photos of badly scarred, crooked chests; of nipples that looked as if they had been glued or badly stitched back on, reports of nipples that had ‘fallen off’. A photo of bloody breast tissue lying in a silver surgeon’s bowl. I saw pictures of constructed penises that looked like ready-rolled pastry and the raw exposed flesh that was cut away from arms or thighs to build them. I learned about how an artificial vagina can be constructed from a scrotal sack, and how, in the words of one MTT, “some of the tissues get starved of nutrients and oxygen (and) tends to die off”. I learned about ‘phantom penis syndrome’ and how it can affect some post-op MTTs when they become aroused.
It was horrific. It was nothing like the ‘My 2 Year Transition Story’ YouTube videos. I did not make an appointment for Jessie to see the doctor. I did not take her to a gender clinic.
“You’re not a straight boy, Jessie. You’re a lesbian.” I reasoned.
She shouted, furious, “I am not a lesbian!”
Her 16th birthday came and went. She had a party and her friends took over the ground floor. I kept one eye out from upstairs. Some cross-looking little goth girls smoked and drank beer at the bottom of the garden.
“Who were those girls?” I asked the next day.
“Those boys were Ryan and Jake.”
I snorted.
I did try to find Jessie a therapist who would help her reconcile with being female. The only openly gender critical therapist a Google search threw up lived in Texas. No use to us, then. I was put in touch with several people by email, but I could find no-one who worked in our area. Those I did communicate with were wonderfully supportive but asked me not to name them, not to give out their email address or talk about them. The message was clear – publicly questioning Transtopia could be professional suicide.
Jessie talked disparagingly of ‘otherkin’, the world of people who seriously ‘identify’ as animals. Cats, mostly, or wolves, and sometimes dragons. She didn’t take them very seriously. I said I couldn’t see a lot of difference between their beliefs and her own. She scowled–but then she laughed.
I showed Jessie photographs of Danielle Muscato and Alex Drummond: both men who consider themselves to be women.
I showed her a picture of an FTT (female to trans), who claimed she was a gay man, breast-feeding her baby.
“Man or woman?” I pestered her. “What makes a woman? What makes a man?”
We watched a video about Paul Wolscht, a man in his late forties who now ‘identifies’ and ‘lives as’ a 7- year old girl. Jessie was horrified. She said it was gross. I said that if gender really is all about identity, then his identity is surely as valid as any other. She looked at me, incredulous. I shrugged. There was a silence.
I showed her Peachyoghurt’s YouTube channel and we watched the videos together. Peachyoghurt made Jessie laugh. Sometimes I felt like we were getting somewhere, but when I asked her, the answer was always the same.
“Nothing’s changed. I’m still a boy.”
“What about Rachel Dolezal?” I asked one day, in the middle of dinner. “She was born white but honestly feels as if she is black. How is that different?”
“It just is.”
“Why?”
“I’m eating my dinner, mum.”
I taught her about how gender is a hierarchy; I gave her articles that showed that ‘transwomen’ are as likely to be arrested for violent crime against women as men; and that wealthy, older men are investing huge amounts of money in the transitioning of children.
Sigh. “I’m still a boy, mum. Nothing has changed.”
When Jessie was due to register at college at 16, she told me she wanted to register as a boy, as Jake. I had seen this coming and I was not keen at all. I felt that the more she indulged Jake; ascribed the good things in her life to being perceived as a male, the less there would be left of Jessie. The deeper she waded in the waters of Transtopia, the harder it would be to turn back. I worried about the effect on her education, and the damage that would be done by people in authority appearing to buy into her delusion. I was determined to at least find her some time and space to think a while longer before stepping into a life in which her ’transness’ was either the elephant in the room or the main focus of her being. She’d been offered a place at an excellent college an hour away from us. I took a gamble.
“You can do what you like when you are 18,” I told her. “But for now, you register as Jessie- as a girl- or you go to the college two blocks away from our flat.”
To say she was not pleased is an understatement. There were tears and there was shouting. But she registered at college as Jessie Maynard.
We know that we are supposed to say that transwomen are real women. We know that it upsets them when we don’t. We also know, although we think about it far less, that we are supposed to believe that teenage girls who think they are boys, are actually men. The reason the cry ‘transwomen are real women’ is so important is that the minute we stop buying into that ‘reality’ the whole house of cards collapses.
I talked with Jessie about the way we treat boys and girls differently and how their brains develop differences because of that. I reminded her that in Victorian times, and well into the 20th century, pink was considered to be a boy’s colour and boys wore dresses until they were as old as eight. Gender expectations are different in different cultures. How could your brain be right but your body wrong? Is Caitlin Jenner really a woman, and is the hardest part of being a woman really deciding what to wear? Can sixty years of male privilege be wiped away with surgery and a lipstick? I talked a lot.
After a while I would always ask, “Do you want me to go away?” Usually she would say, “Yes,” but sometimes she would shake her head. “No, you can stay.”
I told her how angry it made me feel that she had friends whose parents used her ‘preferred pronouns’, because I wouldn’t tell an anorexic girl she looked better thin, or comment on how cool the cutting scars on a boy’s arms looked.
I tried to give her support and let her know that I would always love her, but I never wavered for a minute from the idea that a woman cannot ‘become’ a man. Jessie and I went out for walks, to the cinema; out to lunch. I watched her and thought how clever she was, how compassionate, how thoughtful, how beautiful. I couldn’t bear the thought that she might mutilate herself in pursuit of something she could never really have. I wore sunglasses far too often that summer, but it helped to hide my eyes.
Then, at a party, Jessie met up with a friend she hadn’t seen for a year. Hazel had lived as a boy called Harvey for 8 months and then re-identified as a girl. Unbeknownst to me, they talked a lot over the next few weeks.
“What does Hazel say about it all?” I asked, curious, when Jessie told me. She shrugged. “Pretty much the same as you.”
When she asked if she could stay the weekend at Hazel’s house, obviously I said yes. I began crossing my fingers and hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel.
A week later she said “I’m thinking about it all, mum. I’m not sure what I think anymore.”
Jessie started at college and had never seemed so happy. Slowly, she seemed to begin reconciling with her femaleness. Then she told me she wanted to tell me something ‘later’. I thought I knew, I suspected, I hoped and I hoped. I waited and time passed slowly.
One day she texted me on the way to college, “I am a girl. I was never a boy.’
She has told the group of friends that called her Jake the same. Beth has been accepting, saying “Now you’re my preferred gender.” The only friend who is disappointed is a boy.
“You are becoming problematic.” he told her. “You need to educate yourself.”
Jessie saw the irony.
Jessie wrote a respectful but trans-critical post on her Tumblr account, and two of her ‘transboy’ followers messaged her saying they had also been feeling that way for some time and asked her to tell them more. She is currently messaging with several young people who are experiencing gender confusion. I hope she can help them, as her friend Hazel and I helped her, to realise that your potential should not be governed by your genitals; that the problem is gender and the solution is to try to change the system, not yourself.
I realise that it could have all gone horribly wrong: Jessie could have turned her back on our family and bought into the myth that anyone who questions trans ideology is phobic, full of hatred, and should be discarded in the name of liberation and finding yourself. If things had gone that way, I could have lost a child as well as a daughter. Every family is different and I would not presume to tell another parent how to deal with their child’s assertion that they are transgender. It is a minefield. If I had ever felt that Jessie needed to transition to stay alive, I would have acted differently, but I never once felt that she was in danger of taking her own life. Of course, I had never expected my daughter to tell me she was my son, either.
I do not dispute that, for a very small number of people, their gender and body dysmorphia has gone so far that the only comfortable way for them to survive in this culture is to live as the opposite sex. These people should have the same rights as the rest of us, they should not be discriminated against and they should be able to move about their business in safety. Housing and jobs should be open to them, just as they should to any member of society. I don’t want to belittle their suffering and I would not ‘misgender’ someone to their face. But a man is not a woman and a woman is not a man. These are biological differences, and biology is the fundamental basis of female oppression. To claim that being a woman is no more than a feeling is to instigate the erasure of women. The idea that we should buy into the myth that our young people are ‘born in the wrong body’ because they do not want to conform to contemporary gender stereotypes is doublespeak worthy of an Orwellian dystopia. The fact that teenage girls, predominantly young lesbians, are rejecting their womanhood in an attempt to become their oppressors should fill society with horror. Instead we are making ‘being trans’ into the latest fashion and parading these children in newspapers and on reality TV shows. I don’t know where it will end.
What I do know is that if I had let Jessie register at college as a boy and taken her to a gender clinic, we would be looking at a very, very different picture now. My beautiful 16-year-old daughter would have stepped down the road to public transitioning and a lifetime on medication. She would be looking towards a very different future.
Thank you to those of you that gave me support. To the women and men who have written so honestly about their experiences as parents, or as gender questioning young adults. Words cannot describe the strength you gave me when I needed to believe that I was doing the right thing in not supporting Jessie’s immediate transition. One more strong, healthy young woman is growing up a feminist.
Thoughts from Jessie Maynard:
Although at the time I didn’t appreciate it, the constant repetition of “you can’t be a boy” did me good. A lot of good. I had been spending too much time on the internet and I had got it into my head that somehow, biological girls could really be boys, if they “identified” as such (& vice versa).
As someone who’s always had a mostly realistic grip on the world, for some reason I had been pulled into a world where boys could become girls and girls could become boys. I felt that because I said I was a boy, I was a boy.
At the time, I felt that my mum not immediately calling me Jake and using male pronouns was horrible and transphobic. But in the long run, without her resistance, I probably wouldn’t be as happy as I am today, as I would still be thinking I was a boy and trying to “pass” as a boy (which I would never be able to do without body-altering hormones.)
I think that if I had changed my pronouns in September, and registered at my college as a boy I would be a lot more unhappy as I would constantly be trying to “pass” and I wouldn’t be making the friends I wanted to, as I would be trying to fit in with the “male crowd”. When I arrived at my college, making friends wasn’t my primary motive, however the friends I have made are almost all female, and I don’t think I would have those friends if I had been trying to fit in as a boy.
Most of all, understanding gender as a social construct has taken me a long way in my personal life, and in my ideas about feminism and the way women and men are treated, especially women by the trans movement.
I’m glad that I realised before it was too late, as I am now happier in my own body and identity. I think that as a whole, many girls who wouldn’t’ve identified as transgender 10/20 years ago are now thinking they are which is dangerous and harmful to them, and that talking to them maturely and explaining gender as a social construct could really help them.
Thank you, this was so helpful for me!!
I’m so glad it was helpful.
My daughter came out as gay at 14. She knows we are an accepting family, so everyone was comfortable with this. She was VERY girly as a child and only in HS did she start to reject this. At 15 she came to us and told us she was trans and wanted to be called a boy. We told her we loved her very much and want to be very supportive of her, but that even with hormones and surgery she will never be 100% a male and that gender is a social construct and she needs to get comfortable with her body (it was a much longer softer conversation than that.) Fast forward 6 months of her not wanting to talk about it anymore and lots of lost friends and isolation at school when she went to a school counselor and said she was suicidal. Six weeks into a residential treatment center stay, she revealed she had been raped by a boy a year earlier. Nine months later and she is still pushing fora change in name/pronouns.
The reason I share this is that at her current treatment center of 35 girls with suicidal idealogy, 6 are trans and 5 of them are called by male names/pronouns and came from progressive families and communities that were supportive in their desire to transition. (An aside, this treatment facility had never had any trans girls before this year and now they have 6.) At first when my daughter said she was suicidal, I thought it was my fault, my unwillingness to switch her pronouns, but now I know there were other factors as well. After seeing all these other kids at her treatment center, who got the pronoun changes they wanted, and yet these kids are there for suicidal ideaology. I’m more confident that switching pronouns and preparing to make the medical transition is still not the fix for happiness. Therapists need to help the kids and their families deal with the underlying issues of young women not wanting to accept their bodies. I also bring this up because I am constantly reading about large percentages of transgendered people being victims of rape. It has never been clear to me if the statistics being thrown around are for a rape that occurred before wanting to transition or after transitioning. Does anyone have more information on that?
PS I can’t figure out how to add a comment without it being a reply to someone else’s comment. Help?
This is such a detailed, resource-and-experience rich testimony. So much love for your both for getting through the journey together. As confusing and isolating as it once was, it’s so good to have you here amongst friends. Your words and your continuing work to help others is immensely valued.
Thank you. The online comments from other gender-critical parents were a lifeline for me when Jessie and I were going through this.
Your words have given me hope. I beg you. Help me. Tonight I Found my quite introverted, socially awkward OCD son Nathan posting as Natalie to a blog he had to write for school. Your story reads just like mine. Scared to death. Not sure resources. Husband recently passed away in an accident so I am now handling this on my own. Please, any resources to help in the face of this “it’s all okay” society.
4thwavenow – Hello. I’ve encouraged Brian Burch of Catholicvote.org to reach out to you on a few ocassions about how youth are being sterilized. I know the Catholic church may not seem like an ally, but on this topic I believe they can help spread the word about this madness that is being done.
brianburch@catholicvote.org
https://www.catholicvote.org/discover/policy-101/
Hi Lily and Jessie, thank you somuch for your article. I am aheartbroken mom. My situation is a little different.My daughter is 21 but started talking about being gay and then transgender about a year and a half ago after hanging out with transgender friends who basically xropped her after they convinced her.
She has never shown any indication that she was anything other than a woman until over a year ago. Always had. boyfriend and crushes on boys.Liked bows and frilly dresses.But also was a Tom boy, liked soccer but also ballet and tap. She liked dolls and bears but also train sets. She always chose her own clothes and never wanted to dress as a boy till over a year ago when she started binding and buying mens clothes and wearing them time to time. All this also started happening after her numerous boyfriends who she mostly broke up with as she got tired of them. Also because she is so pretty men would constantly bother her. She now says she hates men,even though she still has many male crushes which she says she would totally go out with if ever possible. She claims to have female celebrity crushes also, but has never shown any interest in having a relationship with a woman till over a year ago.
She is an extreme person and has always identified with the underdog.I believe she has decided she is transgender because of this and her new distaste for men and this may be her way to keep the males away from her. I refuse to call her them or they but try to avoid she or her. She has been depressed for the last couple of years and I believe this is also a contributing factor. She was in therapy for a while but then stopped and is thinking about a gender therapist.I have offered to pay for a therapist close to our home but she did not want it.
She is a legal adult so I cant intervene at all,it is hard to talk to her about it she gets defensive. The other day when we actually talked about it she said she sometimes feels male but is not a woman at all. She still binds occassionally, but has grown her hair long and wears make up .
She does not see how she has self diagnosed and is confused.I feel like the only way to keep peace is to not bring up the subject,but I want her to start thinking and realizing what she is doing, and stop just convincing herself of something she is not.
If you can give me any advice I would greatly appreciate it.I am watching this beautiful talented woman destroy her life. Thanks
Cecile,
Your child sounds so much like my trans relative (I’m not the mother, but an aunt) in terms of a childhood of both ballet and soccer, my trans relative came back from college and announced the desire to transition.
The thing that jumped out at me in your post, Cecile, is that, after dating several boyfriends, your kid claims to both “hate” men and want to be one. To me this shows a deep compartmentalizing in her thinking.
From what I’ve observed reading all the parents posting, and the mistakes made in our family, I would say that the best thing is to support your daughter as a person, but not support every claim she makes about her “true” self. I know there are a lot of belief systems, both religious and not, that give kids the idea that they have one true self, one true purpose in life, one true destiny. But those of us who are older know that over the course of a lifetime, there are many purposes, many goals (this is not something to tell the kid necessarily, but to remind yourself that it is likely that this too shall pass). I think being “supportive” to the point of going along with every whim is dangerous in situations like trans kids, cutting, and other drastic behaviors.
Good luck, Cecile!
Thank you Trish, I too believe it will pass but am still so worried as she has convinced herself.
Cecile,
There are a lot of things that may be cause for hope – you two are talking about therapists and binders, not hormones and surgery. Binders are definitely dangerous, but I think from her point-of-view, probably less permanent than a mastectomy.
Also, we forget over time how fraught puberty is – and how long it lasts. So many of the girls making FTT videos seem to me to not so much want to be men as they want to be boys – they like One Direction, as opposed to Stallone movies. I suspect that a lot of the trans stuff, especially among teens, is a resistance to adulthood taking the form of rejecting their born sex.
She probably doesn’t feel like she diagnosed herself, she probably feels she has discovered something about herself. A kid that age doesn’t know how many different things a person can be/do over a lifetime. Also a kid that age doesn’t necessarily realize that a person can not just discover something about herself but can MAKE something of herself. This may be a big problem in the whole trans agenda – it is presented to the kids as a process of discovery but it seems to me to be more of a process of making themselves fit into the trans mold.
There’s a book I read when I was a teen, “Kinflicks” – which is a humorous novel about a woman who goes through many phases, political & sexual, in the late 60s/early 70s. (The title refers to home movies). It gives a perspective rare in “young adult” fiction.
“A kid that age doesn’t know how many different things a person can be/do over a lifetime. Also a kid that age doesn’t necessarily realize that a person can not just discover something about herself but can MAKE something of herself. This may be a big problem in the whole trans agenda – it is presented to the kids as a process of discovery but it seems to me to be more of a process of making themselves fit into the trans mold”
This is so poignant, Trish. Kids have a very limited understanding of how they create their own identity. There are certainly propensities or tendencies that we all have bc of our personalities, experiences, upbringing, and of course, the ideas and beliefs that are indoctrinated into us by propaganda and social teachings. It’s incredibly scary that this is being framed as a process of discover.
Even sexuality can be very fluid and change over time. Not only in regards to the sex of the people we are attracted to, but what type of intimacy and connection we crave at different ages. Yet sexuality, too, is being given new labels and there’s an entire lexicon of complicated terminology and “spectrums”.
Not only is this confusing and essentially pointless, it does a few things:
1. It teaches people that ambiguity is intolerable (ironically, right?) – we must define and label everything. even the nuanced, complex, and infinite ways in which humans can simply “be”.
2. It forces people to constantly be analyzing and interpreting themselves in a stream of unhealthy navel-gazing which is VERY different from the process of self discover that comes from actual lived experiences and relationships. It causes people to “self discover” in isolation, in front of their computers, while reading cult-like dogma.
I really appreciate all the thoughtful discussion on this page.
Sasha,
Thanks so much for your kind remarks.
I think you have hit on some really important things, too – the idea of ambiguity being intolerable, and noticing the navel-gazing instead of discovery by going out and meeting the world head-on. The intolerance of ambiguity seems to be intersecting with the desire to be the most unique, so the trend appears that LGBT will eventually be followed by a letter for every inhabitant of early – better a box for every one than for anyone to be outside of all the boxes.
The preference for navel-gazing over exploring the bigger world is very sad because it stands in the way of these kids from finding out that maybe they are stronger and more resilient than they thought, that one can have relationships that include both affection and different views. One example – my husband was a math major & college athlete, and had several different jobs after college, from working in the office of a nonprofit to driving a bread truck. Then he took what he thought would be a temp job at a library – and even though neither his family, nor I, would have predicted “he’d be a great librarian” he’s actually a great – and very happy – librarian. If he only acted on what he thought he knew about himself at age 19, this discovery would never have happened.
It must be so difficult with an older child/young adult. I think one of the problems is that young people have an idea of how bring a woman ‘ought to’ feel. The truth is of course, that if you are born female, a woman feels exactly as you feel. There’s no right or wrong way to be a woman. If she is wearing make up and has grown her hair, maybe she is realising this. Not that women need to wear makr up or grow their hair, of course! One of the things Jessie said to me was that men no longer whistled at her in the street when she presented as a boy. It can be a protection mechanism. I hope your daughter resolves her issues. Huge hugs to you, I know how hard it can be. I would be careful with gender therapists. Very, very few are gender critical.
BEING a woman, not bring a woman!
I too believe it is more of a defense mechanism as she is sick of men bothering her, she has also gained wait which she has never had a problem with before,as if to hide her body and try to make herself unattractive to men.She told me yesterday when I wad y rying to talk to her that she is not a woman. She is in denial and reconfirming her self diagnosis daily. I am hoping it will pass eventually but I am worried as once she gets into somethong she seems to stick with it in an almost obssessove way. If you have any additional ideas or advice or if thete was a group I could contact. Thanks Cecille
there is very much use in taking a radical feminist and critical look at the way girls are dissociating from their bodies. there is real threat and harm for being female and i’ve seen a lot of parents commenting about the idea that weight gain, avoiding femininity, and denying femalehood is a defense mechanism.
And, frankly it’s a response to legitimate threat. We all cope with patriarchy differently, and I can’t blame some girls for choosing this method to attempt an escape. I think there is so much deep and valuable work to be done and I’m truly disheartened that more clinicians are completely oblivious!
I utilize radical feminist theory and principles in my work with kids. I believe it’s incredibly freeing to realize how society operates and be able to recognize and name the root of the problems that girls face.
Lily and Jesse
Thanks so much for your insightful comments. Being in a family with a relative who announced being trans after year one of college, in which I am pretty much the only one of the adults who is vocal about questioning the trans agenda (my spouse agrees but is a quieter person, so I kinda wound up the lightning rod. Then again, maybe they’re too chicken to face the fact that two of the adults don’t buy this stuff). I haven’t voiced it to the trans relative – who only brought it up to me one time, and hasn’t even asked me to change what name or pronouns I use.
Our family has basically gone the way of drinking the koolaid, and it only took a couple of months. At first, all the adult relatives were confused and sad, but trans relative quickly started suggesting “resources” that gave the trans agenda straight down the line. Trans relative’s mom insisted that all relatives/family friends be informed, so they wouldn’t accidentally find out on facebook and feel bad. I think this was a HUGE mistake. But who would listen to the one adult in the family who says, “even with hormones and surgery, XX and XY never change?
In under a year, we received a letter from trans relative’s grandfather, expressing pleasure at how trans relative is fitting in (with the only physical change being a haircut. Basically the same wardrobe as before the “transition”).
Meanwhile, since I’ve basically become the family’s identified “transphobe” no one will listen to me. I see signs that this “transition” is not the fait accompli that everyone else seems to accept. First, the fact that more than a year out, trans relative hasn’t asked me or my spouse to use the new name/pronouns. When we spoke on the phone (the “coming out call that the mom demanded), I asked if we could be sent a photo – and trans-relative, usually very talkative, had no verbal response. When we visited and talked face-to-face, never once mentioned anything trans at all. The fact that the new name is a name used for both genders (think Chris or Pat) and there is a family member of the trans relative’s birth sex with that name. Trans relative admitted when first announcing that the idea of transitioning was only being considered for under a year (basically since leaving for college). My spouse saw a video trans relative posted recently, and said trans relative looked really sad (I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to watch) – and this was a person who was always happy before.
Lily, I think your article is a roadmap for the best possible way to respond to an announcement of a desire to transition. I’m sure this will do so much good for families in the future. And it does me some good too, in that it helps me feel like I am not the only person refraining from jumping onto the trans-train.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I do hope my article can help people. I know how it feels to be one of the few gender critical people in a group – very isolating! Luckily my husband was onside, but one of my younger children was initially very angry with us for not ‘supporting’ Jessie. He had spent a lot of time on social media too, and seemed to genuinely believe that changing sex was not only quite possible but fairly straightforward. Thankfully he too now is gender critical, although not as much so as the rest of the family. It is a good sign if your relative isn’t taking hormones: I hope s/he manages to see through the transtrend. It is interesting that you say s/he does not seem happy. Transitioning rarely seems to bring happiness.
Thank you for such an honest and helpful post. You are both incredibly brave and articulate.
My 18 year old daughter told us a few months ago that she is actually a boy, and has since registered at university under a boy’s name. She had been suffering from acute anxiety and depression. At the moment I don’t think there is a rational argument to be had with her so we are trying to be neutral but supportive. And encouraging her to resolve her mental health problems as her first priority. She is now on effective anti-depressants and also been screened now for autism, which makes so much sense, I can see how someone who can’t identify her own feelings and is exhausted from trying to decipher social clues all the time might honestly believe changing gender is the answer.
She has come home for the holidays still identifying as a boy but in every other respect is just the same person – hanging out with her old (female) friends and siblings. She is also patently less emotionally mature than her peers. And although she wears masculine clothes and a short haircut, isn’t wearing a binder, and seems much more relaxed in herself. I don’t think she made any new friends at uni, although has managed OK in her own way.
I am terrified of alienating her, or pushing her into the arms of a trans cult, so playing the waiting game seems to us the right thing to do, and keeping everything else as normal as possible. And giving unwavering love. In the meantime I am doing what I can to get her some therapy to help with flexible thinking and coping with her feelings, while she also has time to mature. I can’t bear the thought of her going down the route of hormones and surgery, although I accept that for some people this is the only way to a bearable existence, and if it turns out that this is needed for her, then I will help her with that, as long as it is a decision made with maturity and full consideration. But every fibre of my being knows that she is not transgender – she is a confused, anxious, undiagnosed autistic young woman struggling with her identity and to make sense of the world.
My 13 yyear old who is going through all this (I have refused to let her change and bog how I wish j didn’t buy a binder) was just diagnosed with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (essentially aspergers but they don’t use that name anymore). I think many of us moms will find that link in our girls in regards to this transgender issue
Jessie is not autistic, but huge numbers of trans-identifying girls are. I think there are one or two articles about the link between autism and trans-identification on this site. If you can, watch Peachyoghurt’s ‘Gender for Dummies in 5 Minutes’ on YouTube with your daughter, and ask her what she makes of it. Good luck, you’re not alone and hopefully your daughter will grow out of this worrying phase in her life.
Tony Attwood in his book on Asberger’s Syndrome describes how girls may be gender nonconforming. Also that it is not uncommon for girls (or boys) to want to swap to the other gender where they feel they may fit in better than with their peers. In his experience this may last a year or two until the individual finds that they do not actually fit in. There is also some research showing that over time, people with ASD will desist, and recently published guidelines that suggest caution.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15374416.2016.1228462
Unfortunately the unproven “male brain in a female body” message which is being put out by schools and government here in the UK is having a devastating impact on these vulnerable young people, the vast majority of whom are not transgender, but do have a difficulty with gender identity. They need skilled help, not applause and affirmation of their preferred pronoun.
The way I see it in my ASD daughter there is a powerful combination of a weak sense of self; difficulty fitting in socially; delayed identity development; uncertainty over sexuality; susceptibility to anxiety and depression and rigid “black and white” thinking which has brought her to believing she is transgender. If we had had had any idea that this was a risk (or indeed that she had ASD – we thought she was a bit eccentric and stubborn) , then I would have got her to a therapist experienced in ASD a long time ago to help her understand her feelings, and develop flexible thinking skills. As it is, we will wait it out, keep her safe with as strong ties to her family and friends as possible, keep our fingers crossed for the therapy now, and hope against hope that any gender clinic exercises extreme caution.
Those of us with daughters on the spectrum have had two problems: one is the very recent understanding that girls with high functioning autism present very differently from boys. Because this has only recently been understood, many of our daughters missed being diagnosed and helped when they were younger. So the second problem is they hit adolescence, with the identity and gender issues you mention in your comment. By that time, their social issues and other problems are cemented and have never been addressed. And because they are often on their computers all the time even more than other teenagers they are so much more vulnerable to indoctrination. And many have no interest in seeing a therapist at this point in life, especially if their parents are pushing for it. And of course that’s assuming their parents can even find a therapist experienced with autism who isn’t on the trans train. It’s a clusterfuck of historic proportions.
ScaredMomofTeen, if you bought her a binder, and she’s 13, for goodness sake, take it away. She’ll scream and rant, and get over it. Later, a few years from now, she’ll be thanking you.
In fact they are showing more and more in the trans cult really ARE autistic, thus lacking the sensitivity to.others, and especially in the IT field where so many mtfs are in that profession, the censorship on Facebook anytime in public groups we question this nonsense we get banned for days. Mtfs are running facebook and high positions in other tech companies with no sensitivity and often threats to women and feminists that question the trans agenda.
I’d like more info on this please.
The problem still arrises though in finding help (even with therapist trained in ASD patients) is that they are on the trans train. We have yet to find any help at all who will not fully believe in her being a “boy”. We have now gone through over ten therapist/psych/councilors/programs both inpatient and outpatient. We even had a councilor call child services on us saying we were not allowing her to transition… we are by far gun shy now. We are resorting to praying and to try to keep putting a bug in her ear here and there on the fact she is a girl. Refusing to call her he or another name. And it is working. She is calming down and buying girl clothes and such. Us as a family and keeping her close… homeschooling is another huge help. She has also been hugely limited to her computer access. You all have been paramount in all this after reading all your stories.
Oh also wanted to mention that addressing her depression was huge. The meds she’s been taking has been huge (we have had to stick to on psychologist to whom she doesn’t like luckily it’s not made her worse). But I know someone had asked what she has been on and it has been seroquel (which helped get her sleeping on track as well as mood stabilizer) and lamictal. (It’s been awhile since I have been able to post)
Are you paying any of her expenses to go to college under a boy’s name/identity? Because that was a very smart thing for Lilly to refuse to do.
Unfortunately if taken away she will resort back to what she was doing which was finding tape and ducktaping, tying material around her and also finding ace bandages to tie them down. That was by FAR more dangerous then the binder. And right now… the therapist are actually associating the feeling of a HUG (or waited blankets) with her autism and why she likes the security of the binder. I would much rather her set it aside first. It’s also falling apart at this point so I’m hoping it will get discarded eventually. But again… it will be far worse of what she will do to herself if I just “take it away” because I can. I’d rather not deal with a collapsed lung on my kid
This article is such a great resource for parents who are just beginning this nightmare. Any parent who is just starting to encounter this situation, PLEASE read all of the articles that Lily has linked. It took a couple of years for me to truly understand what has been going on in society and if I had read this in the beginning I’m sure I would have acted differently. I wish I had been as proactive as you were, Lily. I learned about all the things you’ve written about over hundreds of hours of searching, but I wasn’t able to instill these ideas in my now 18-year-old daughter. How I wish I had taken her phone away at night and the Internet, too. How I wish I had talked to her more about the issues, but it was very difficult to ever start a conversation because she was never open to a real discussion.
Now she has officially changed her name and sex designation with one simple application. She lives in another city and is attending university. She’s going deeper down the rabbit hole, but hasn’t yet started hormones or surgery. The binding really bothers me. Had I realized that binding is a form of self harm, I would have never allowed it. Now it’s too late. So, now I’m kind of holding my breath to see if she can find her way out of this or not before she really harms her body permanently.
Thank you so much, both of you, for putting so much time into this. It is really comprehensive. New parents to this issue need to fully understand everything that you have covered because this is a multi-level issue.
I too wish I never let my daughter bind!! I can’t get her out of it!! She’s not open to discussion (just had another fight yesterday). Dr on her testing says this is prob because of her autism in that she feels the security of the binder (kind of like a hug in an autistic kid).
I had never thought of that link! I know a lot of younger autistic children like having weighted blankets, perhaps binding is not so very different.
Dorothy, and other parents here,
As I asked above of another mom, are you helping support your daughter financially in college under her different name and trans identity?
It seemed effective for Lily to refuse to do so. Even though her daughter was an adult.
**
For all the parents here,
Honestly, parents are not helpless.
What I respect about Lily is that, once she realized teens can’t be trusted to do as they were raised to, and she began to assert more authority, she became fully engaged and spoke up. And kept speaking up. She did thorough, fantastic research, and shared it with her daughter (and now, her readers). She didn’t wait with fingers crossed, hoping for the best. She took action. She didn’t cater to her daughter’s confusion, and as 4th Wave Now put it well, her “indoctrination.”
From having read a good deal from the trans cult myself for ~25 years, it’s important for parents to know, if they don’t already, that there are trans-activists *actively seeking to recruit kids* into a trans perspective and identity, to affirm those transactivists’ personal beliefs about themselves, to affirm their reality/view of “gender”, and to help them politically, through strength in numbers.
A little story:
Both my parents were raised with religion, but had become atheists before they met in the mid-1950s.
What they’d each observed growing up in churches, was that churches had developed slick indoctrination methods to lure in and ensnare people, and inculcate them into believing religious myths, show up on Sundays, and of course, contribute to the donation plate.
My parents understood that even adults could be ensnared by the manipulative practices of churches, such as by their using peer pressure to get people to conform behaviorally in church: standing up when others did, sitting, kneeling, praying, singing, whatever the priest or minister said to do. Not doing so, one would stand out like a sore thumb. Well, it isn’t much of a leap to go from doing as told to thinking as told. If one sits there in church every week, with the promise of new friends and community, tea and cookies afterward, in exchange for listening to a sermon one is skeptical of (but for which there is no opportunity during the service to question, and it is implied that if one questions too much during tea time, one will not be welcome back), eventually the person starts to accept what they keep hearing, their resistance breaks down, and they go along not only behaviorally, but ideologically, with the herd.
What my parents each saw was that these manipulations (and many more used by religious groups) hook *even adults* unsuspectingly. They recognized that children would have little academic or worldly experience to know how to recognize when they were being manipulated.
My parents knew that when my brother and I started attending public schools in the 1960s, we would be surrounded by kids raised in religion, and experience peer pressure to be religious, and to attend friends’ churches or synagogues.
Rather than taking the stance of “let’s let the kids go to lots of churches and decide for themselves,” they knew that as kids, we would not be able to “decide for ourselves,” because we wouldn’t be able to recognize the manipulative tactics and nonsensical, unscientific myths being taught in churches.
So before we went to kindergarten, they prepared us by talking to us about the problems with religion, religious texts, and rituals to “hook” people, the many manipulations used by churches, and so on. Every night at the dinner table, conversationally.
They taught us critical thinking methods. The importance of not relying on one book, but seeking information from many sources, asking critical/skeptical types of questions, evaluating and weighing the information, looking for logical consistency and accuracy, etc., and then deciding for ourselves, while staying open to changing our opinions as new information came along, if we thought about it critically/skeptically, first, to determine if it was sound.
By the time we were in kindergarten, we were virtually bullet-proofed against religious indoctrination, and neither my brother or I ever felt the least bit of lure toward religion, because we could spot the manipulations and poor logic.
**
Twenty years ago, my father bought a book called “Cults in Our Midst,” by Margaret Singer, professor emeritus of psychology at UC Berkeley. I recommend it. It describes deceptive manipulations used by cults, in excellent detail. Cults are always refining their techniques, knowing at least some of the common ones is helpful in recognizing manipulations being pulled on oneself by advertisers, politicians, and groups of all kinds. Based on what I learned from this book, I have been able to spot cults and deceptive manipulations. This reaffirmed that resistance to manipulation can be taught.
**
With transgender ideology, it’s different in that parents have been caught off-guard by this new “religion” and its unfamiliar indoctrination methods rapidly sweeping throughout our cultures (such as silencing people by accusing them of being “transphobic” or “TERFS.” Most have had no chance to prepare themselves, let alone their kids, for something of this sort. Unless the parents had been long-time radical feminist lesbians and had seen this coming 30 years ago, as some of us have had that vantage point.
I am not a parent, so if you wish to ignore my opinions here based on that, ok. But I can speak from my personal experience as a child raised by parents who felt strongly about developing opinions on issues, and teaching their kids proactively about those issues, as well as having the TV news on every day, the daily paper and news magazines on the coffee table, and discussing the news daily and teaching critical thinking skills to us, that it was invaluable to my upbringing both to learn my parents’ views, and why they held them, and to be encouraged to ask critical questions and develop my own points of view by learning to debate with them (not by their avoiding topics and “hoping for the best”).
This is not the same as simply telling kids what to think. It’s about providing ample information and arguments/reasoning, and teaching critical thinking skills. As well as sharing one’s unvarnished opinions. Many, many times over. And always explaining why, to teach reasoning skills.
Which is what Lily started doing with her daughter regarding trans ideology.
What I really admire about Lily is not only that she trusted her gut, did her homework, and stated her opinions and reasoning with her daughter, but she *shared her research* and required (or granted privileges to her daughter) if she read the articles.
Lily was proactive, not wishy-washy, and she didn’t let a “fear of losing her daughter to the trans cult” to stop her from trying everything she could think of to get through to her daughter. And yes, even yelling and losing her patience and temper at times, because who wouldn’t when engaged with someone hooked by this almost-cult? Lily is human.
And by Jessie’s own acknowledgment, the methods of her mother’s worked. And that if her mom had not withheld funding for the college Jessie really wanted to attend, under a male name/identity, the results may have been quite different.
Lily’s is an example of an authoritative parenting style, not an authoritarian, nor passive style. She gives her opinions, and her reasons, and teaches critical thinking. She acted as a teacher, sharing information and ideas. She extended privileges as her daughter matured and earned them through responsible behavior (reading articles from different perspectives.)
She didn’t let her daughter run the show out of fear of pushing her daughter away. It’s authoritarian parents who push their kids away, because they simply order their kids about, instead of teaching them information, ideas, and training them in critical thinking skills and debate.
So many parents nowadays are afraid to speak up and take leading roles in teaching their kids, including sharing their opinions, articles and critical thinking skills. So many seem to be trying to be their child’s friend, rather than the adult in the room, calling out absurd and dangerous trends.
**
I don’t agree with everything Dr. Phil has to say, but one thing he repeats often, that I agree with, is that the job of a parent is to be their kid’s parent, not their friend.
http://www.drphil.com/advice/permissive-parenting/
Of course, the parent/child relationship in the above link is not the same as that of a parent with a child claiming to be trans, but some of the elements remind me of some of the stories here.
I am not in the shoes of any parent here, but it seems that many of the stories are of parents afraid to be more assertive, to state their disagreement with their child, and to share their reading, and Youtubes they are watching, with their child.
But as Lily’s example of very active engagement shows, it doesn’t mean that by doing so, their child is going to be pushed into the trans cult.
I have observed plenty of kids still seeking their parents or other adults to set boundaries and state their opinions, well into the child’s adulthood.
I hope that Lily’s example of active engagement, and perhaps my own childhood story of having parents actively engaged in and being assertive in stating their opinions and teaching debate and critical thinking, will give heart to parents who are afraid of being more assertive and taking the “authoritative parenting style” strategy with their kids who’ve become convinced they’re trans. Or who are saying so, in part seeking their parents to set boundaries.
What better way nowadays to shock, irk, frighten, and rebel against one’s parents than to now claim one is the opposite sex (“gender.”) It seems these kids are crying out for attention and leadership in their struggles to navigate puberty, adulthood, sexism, sexual harassment and assault, particularly in girls, even if they claim the opposite. Or as several have stated, dealing with autism-spectrum challenges.
I’m so sorry Dorothy. It must be heartbreaking. You must never blame yourself, this is a cult, it is not your fault. You did what you needed to do at the time. I’m not so sure my approach would work for every family, because every child is different. At least you and your daughter are still talking, and it is positive that she has not started taking hormones. I hope she finds her way out of the woods.
Lily, you are an inspiration in your perseverance. Talk about a strong female lead! Sometimes I despair in the lack of honest attention the trans issue receives in the media, but then I read posts line yours and hope is restored. Perhaps it won’t be a sweeping and dramatic defeat, but telling your story, Lily, will certainly do it’s part in chipping away at the foundations of the trans cult. I hope that the many confused and scared mothers of teens flirting with a trans identity will come across your post and take courage.
Thank you, Emily.
Reblogged this on The truth about AUTOGYNEPHILIA and commented:
Adult male “transgender” enthusiasts are embarrassed about their obsessive sexualized mimicry of feminine stereotypes. To shift attention away from the erotic aspects of this crossdressing they have cultishly promoted the false notions that “gender identity” is innate in children and that it is possible to “change sex.” The pharma industry, mass media, medical doctors and academic “researchers” have jumped eagerly on the bandwagon – – there’s money to be made. Nowadays, it is common for adolescents to be swayed by this bullshit and the results are often tragic. This story brings a little hope.
Thank you Lily and Jessie for writing this! Very thorough and it describes the transgender rabbit hole that children (and their parents) are falling down. It’s really pretty unbelievable unless you’ve experienced it yourself.
I agree with others that your stories and all of the links are wonderful to have in one place. I’m sure it took you countless hours to gather them all, but it is now a helpful resource to parents that are newly inducted into this club. It will give them hope and a solid knowledge of what they are dealing with.
So nice to hear that Jessie is once again comfortable in her body. Very happy for you both.
I find this line you wrote to be very disturbing: “I did think she was quite young to define her sexuality so suddenly and utterly, and declare it to the world before she had even had a relationship.”
A girl / woman doesn’t have to have had a relationship in order to be a lesbian. I am a 34 year old lesbian who has never had a relationship due to being a home-bound disabled person. That doesn’t mean I’m not a lesbian.
I’m not sure what you mean by it’s disturbing… 15 is quite young to be certain of one’s sexuality(34 is not), especially considering many lesbians don’t realize their sexuality until 19-21 or older. Being in a relationship also tends to define how we feel sexually- not for everyone, but certainly for most.
I agree with that. I came out as a Lesbian at 21, but not until I consummated it, to know if that Path was for me. It wasnt working for me with dudes so I went thru a short bisexual phase toll I KNEW for sure. At 15 I dated a boyfriend at school but felt mostly indifferent towards him and repulsed at male anatomy(penises), long as THAT wasnt involved I was ok. That mever changed and once I experienced my firsy full sexual encounter with another woman it ALL made sense. And I alwaus was a hardcore tomboy grew up to be Butch. Sadly though these proclivities THESE DAYS would be interpreted as trans.
Our rite of passage was cutting our hair short as newly out ButchnLesbins, THAT has been supplanted with breast binding, female self hatred, going on hormones and surgeries…just to tegret that in 4 years.
Back then we had a STRONG Feminist movement teaching us to be PROUD to be Female, and that with Sisterhood and Support, WE COULD DO ANYTHING WE SET OUR MINDS TO AS WOMEN.
That has been supplanted by “if I were a dude, I could do anything I want”.
I will say again and again, freedom does NOT come at the end of a needle of testosterone….
Sorry about typos..
It was the combination of her young age and lack of relationship experience that concerned me, I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear. Of course it’s possible to be certain of your sexuality without having had a relationship: it was Jessie’s youth combined with this that disconcerted me.
I think you need to study up on the teenage brain. The teenage brain is raging with hormones. It operates from the amygdala which is the part responsible for emotional response. The frontal rational cortex, is not fully developed until mid 20’s 23 for girls, 25 for boys, but not to insult anyone I will just say it’s 25. This is something I learned about whilst in college doing my Mental Health course. Here is a great video that explains the teenage brain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiduiTq1ei8
I can relate to what Lycere Freemartin wrote.
I was done with men at 19, two years before I started feeling attracted to women. I figured I’d just be celibate for life.
When I then first had a dream about a lesbian I knew, the fear (terror) I felt upon waking up and feeling attracted to her made me soon realize that the taboo and social sanctions against lesbianism, and the socially policed and obsessively promoted requirement of compulsory heterosexuality, had caused me to repress my natural (human) capability to be sexually attracted to women. I believe all people are genetically bi to some degree, as are so many other species, but we just learn to repress our same-sex attractions, or, as is the case for many women, have good cause to not feel sexual attraction for men, given the universality of male sexism (arising from all men being born into patriarchal culture and the male privilege it bestows.)
Thank you so much for this article and post! My daughter said she is trans in May of this year. I found out her school has been letting her use a boy name and male pronouns.
It’s been a long roller coaster of bullshit because I know my child is not a boy. Nor has she ever wanted to be a boy. I know my child and she is not transgender.
I’m excited to try a new approach with her and I’m glad there is hopefully some light at the end of the tunnel.
My daughter went from wearing make up and girl clothes to wanting to be a boy, all in the space of three months. I know she is a lesbian but I know she is not trans.
Thank you for having this blog, it’s been my only source of support through all of this.
It is scandalous how schools are changing children’s pronouns without telling parents. I am so sorry this has happened to you. FTT teens are nearly always lesbians; I hope your daughter comes to realise this. I’m sorry that her school cannot be your ally in helping her.
I’m a teacher. A lot of us are very concerned that childhood behaviors and phases that would have been considered very normal just a few years ago are now being used as evidence of children’s “gender identities.” But what can we do? Our schools can’t afford discrimination lawsuits from organizations and parents, and there have already been examples of teachers losing their jobs if they refuse to go along with the trans party line: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/katy/news/article/Complaint-Katy-area-teacher-fired-for-refusing-6623487.php
I think a lot of schools are adding students who say they’re transgender (or whose parents say they’re transgender) to the policies they already had in place to protect gay and lesbian students. That might be why some schools are using students’ preferred pronouns without consulting parents–Most of the policies for gay and lesbian students I’m familiar with advise against informing parents of students’ sexual orientations unless it’s necessary and relevant information (impacting school performance), especially if you suspect the student might be in danger if his or her parents found out.
That is useful to know, Lincoln, and I can see how that would work. The worrying thing is that the whole transgender phenomenon is so new and medically uncertain and yet schools are treating it uncritically as though it’s as well understood and established as homosexuality.
Reblogged this on GenderTrender.
I am so happy that things worked out for you and your daughter. I’m kind of jealous. I see no such hope in my situation. My daughter will be 20 in February. I found out a little over a year ago that she considers herself transgender. She wants to be called Mick (not Mik, as I call her which is short for Mikayla). I still call her Mikayla and she. She is my first born and no matter what happens she will always be my baby girl. er friends at college call her Mick and he. It bothers me to no end but what can I do? I too have told her that she will never be a boy no matter what she does but she gets mad at me. I’ve sent her numerous articles and expressed every reason I don’t believe she is transgender to no avail. I have absolutely no control in the situation since she is an adult. I did tell her not to do anything until after she graduates college and is out of my house because of her two sisters. She seems to be questioning using testosterone and isn’t 100% sure about it since a side affect is depression. She already suffers from major depression and has aspergers. It all seems so hopeless. I’m losing my daughter and I can’t do anything about it.
I want to tell you something about Aspergers that people dont seem to know. Its very common for Aspies to want the opposite. You’re on holiday, want to be at home. Have a wild-type guy: try to domesticate him; get a domestic guy, want the opposite.
And then there’s the difficulties with women. I keep seeing mothers trying to talk Aspie daughters out of trans by referring to womanhood. But to an Aspie girl, women seem just as mysterious as they do to men. They are able to multi-task, and can all talk at once. And, they are not interested in abstract stuff, like Aspies, and if you try and talk about your interests, they roll their eyes at each other, and they seem to have a secret non-verbal language, always smirking behind your back. Girls will not tolerate someone who is ‘weird’ and its the intolerance of girls and women, the conformity, that makes an Aspie girl’s life so hard.
Men seem a lot more accepting.. And what they talk about, and how they talk…it makes you feel comfortable and at home. I am always at ease with men and nervous around women. I never know when the women are going to do that nasty smirk thing, that says I said something that didnt conform. yet with men, I can say so many things and they will say “You are so unusual, so interesting! So different to the usual woman!”
This is what your daughter experiences. She’s at ease with men, I bet you, and what she talks about, they’ll find interesting. I remember telling a mixed group how I had noticed that speaking English all the time had changed the faces of the Chinese: they have rounder eyes, and squarer jaws, because different languages work different muscles. The men were fascinated. The women: they rolled their eyes at each other and made sure I saw it. I dont like it when a woman joins a group of men and me and the dynamic changes at once. I dont know how to ‘do woman’. and I bet, your girl doesnt either, and more, she doesnt want to. She wants to be friends with men, and cant, because of all the stupid stuff that says men mustn’t do that. They must only keep a woman around to hit on her. Lucky for me, I have male friends from Europe and even UK. American men, though, seems like they just cant be friends with a woman.
When I was a girl, I wished often I was a man and if I were young, I’d be in this trans cult, no doubt at all. Your daughter can grow out of it, but not by seeking womanhood, she’ll never be like other women and she wont be able to fit in. Your daughter wouldnt be able to roll her eyes and make another woman feel awful, even if she learned to. I know now how its done, but i cant bring myself to do that.
Tell her, there are women out there who dont do this. Ask her, what is it she finds so hard about other women and why men make her feel relaxed. And that also, she has to learn that people are a mixture of good and bad. I learned that the eye-rollers arent just about that. Yes, they are willing to hurt other women, for nothing. But thats not all they are. She will never be like them, and she wont want to be, but there are people out there she can fit with and even men who will be willing just to be friends: they do exist.
Fascinating comment.
This explains my daughter soooo much! She was just diagnosed aspergers. (Its now called high functioning autism spectrum disorder)
Thank you Fiona. I’ve done a lot of research on aspergers and transgenders. There seems to be a correlation and what you said makes sense. Based on a lot of the information I’ve read, I told her I’m not sure if she is actually transgender but a nonconforming female because of her aspergers. People on the spectrum, as I’m sure you know, don’t do well in social situations and can’t read social cues well. She is definitely no exception. I just wish I could get her to think about the information I’m giving her on the subject but I really think it’s a lost cause. I get why can’t you just accept me for who I am. I told her I can’t just blindly tell her it’s ok to “cut her boobs off” as she says and/or take testosterone, call her he and call her by a name other than the one I gave her when I’m not convinced this is actually what is going on with her. I’ve asked if she is even capable of making this type of decision due to the affects of aspergers but nobody has been able to answer that question. They all look at me like I have two heads.
Rette… no. No one wants to help us with this relation of aspergers to trans at all. Especially the medical field. No one wants to touch it. But you are correct in that these kids lack the understanding to correlate the aspergers to feeling like they could be trans when they are not. They are just struggling to belong to something spectacular which right now the trans is just so accepted and celebrated 🙁 If it’s a new diagnosis they especially don’t fully grasp what this means.
“[Non-Aspergers girls] are not interested in abstract stuff, like Aspies, and if you try and talk about your interests, they roll their eyes at each other . . . ”
This is an UNBELIEVABLY SEXIST comment!
Those are really helpful and insightful observations – I know my ASD daughter is struggling to make new friends as a boy away at university, although people have been kind to her on the whole, and she has been playing in a men’s sports team (she is the most courageous person I know). Her real friends are her sister, and the small group of mostly female friends she has had since childhood, all of whom accept her for herself (and aren’t in to eye-rolling etc). She has yet to work that out for herself, tho.
I copied this to give to my daughter who is now 13 and believes she may be transgender. I’ve been looking into the autism connection and it’s very likely that my daughter has it. Previously the diagnosis was ADHD but she couldn’t tolerate the medication and we had her in a school for ADHD and high functioning autistic kids. She’s always done okay academically but socially she’s just so awkward. We tried public school for a semester but it’s just not going to work. I’m grateful that we can send her to the other school. Thank you.
This must be so hard for you, as your child is a young adult. So many of these girls/young women are on the autistic spectrum. It sounds as if you are doing all you can to help her already. I wish you all the best and hope your daughter manages to reconcile with being female.
Thank you. I don’t have much hope in it happening but I pray she never has surgery or takes testosterone.
Thank you. I don’t have much hope in it happening but I pray she never has surgery or takes testosterone. She said she determined this through the internet and seeing what others around her looked like and what they identified as. It’s such a scary thing. I told her the internet is a wonderful thing but it shouldn’t be used to determine something such as this.
First of all, thank you to both of you. I really mean it. You are an inspiration.
I clicked on the link to amitransgender.com. Quite honestly, any teen who reads the first article, numbers 1 through 6 on any given day would be sucked into believing that they were transgender. I have seen a lot of self-diagnosing/validating crap while searching around the Internet, but very few children, teens, and young adults would come away from that page unscathed.
On the day my newly legal adult child told me that they were transgender, I tried the politically correct approach. Then, I read all the politically correct material. Something kept scratching that something was wrong, really wrong. I can never say how thankful I am that I found this blog and all of its links to other transgender critical material. I thought that I was alone, crazy for not buying into the idea that my child is suddenly a different gender than the one they were born as.
I am not calling my child by their new chosen name. I am using terms of endearment and the occasional “slip” into the birth name. I am searching for a new therapist and trying to fire the one who pushed the “coming out” (as per my child). The same therapist who was treating my child for other mental issues for some time before the trans revelation, now joyfully refers to my child by the new name and has gleefully stated that all the other prior mental health issues are just because my child now identifies as transgender. I have been told that my child’s physical illness/chronic condition that runs through several generations of my family, is now caused by the stress of being transgender. My child was treated for the condition years before the transgender self-diagnosis and again, long, rich family history of the same condition. I know my child, my child’s medical history, my child’s past life experiences and family issues and I say otherwise. I have some leverage as our child is still totally dependent on us and doesn’t seem to wish to alter the home support. I am doing everything I can to subtly remind my child of who they really are, underneath this new facade. This posting gives me hope. Thank you again.
I hope you find a new therapist for your child. Your current one sounds extremely toxic. I’m glad my post has given you hope.
Lily: This is just so brilliant. You’ve been way more calm than I have ever managed. The way you kept communication open and active, while neither giving in nor alienating Jessie is just so inspiring and is a model of what we should all do. Your writing is brilliant, You get the reader into the story, your get all the points in and its all backed up with references. To be referenced you is incredible and to think that I could have been some tiny part of your story is just amazing.
Jessie: Its so good to hear that you came thru all this safe and seeing the world in a saner light. Thank you so much for writing what you did. I know it must have been very hard to take that critical look at everything you believed and had centred your life around. To do that and face the social kickback that follows takes great courage.
Anyway thanks to both of you.
Gendercriticaldad, I am ‘fangirling’ at your praise! Your website and comments were so important to me in helping to unravel how Jessie got to such a scary place. Thank you again.
This article was precious, very well-written and thoroughly detailed. Thank you very much. I will be sharing it where I can, in hopes of helping someone.
Reblogged this on scarletvoid.
We must get this conversation started. Next week for sure.
Thank you, both of you. If your stories received half the notice Transacivists stories do, many young people could be saved. Counter messages like yours are desperately needed. As a mum you risked your relationship with your daughter but rescued her. That is real parenting. Also echo your advice about professionals, an ASD assessment is the only one I would recommend. interesting so many of Jessie’s comments mirror my daughter’s. Now they seem inauthentic and scripted. So glad you shared.well done Jessie, girls like you have a lot to teach.
I also felt that some of the things Jessie said sounded repeated verbatim from elsewhere. ‘Using male avatars in video games’ comes up again and again as a reason for being trans. The same things are repeated because of the brainwashing nature of the cult- take a GNC girl and tell her she’s a boy because ABC…
Before a few years ago I would have never thought it necessary to point out that playing as an opposite sex avatar in a video game means -nothing-. I grew up as an avid video game player back when it wasn’t possible to play as a female character. The excitement I remember from the first time I got to chose a female in a game is probably why today I still usually choose female avatars… but I occasionally enjoy dressing up male figures and playing that role. It usually involves nothing more than pretending(in my case) to find women sexually attractive and being able to play the game without worrying about anyone hitting on you inappropriately in return. If someone were a young lesbian or a male with autogynophilia, it’s very easy to understand why they’d find it desirable to make that opposite sex avatar a reality.
And the trans cult, they become so obsessed with this fantasy they forget what reality looks like. I would assume the internet and the constant pressure to play a particular role online is also a large part of it… when you’re the only one who dictates reality for yourself, and you play this role hours and hours every day, it becomes easy to confuse it with the real world.
I think it will be the experience of those like yourself and Jessie and other poster on these sites, which will inform practice in the future. Meanwhile the activists who hold our children hostage are being acquiesced terms by professionals who either through fear or failure are dismissing counter arguments.
Yeah, as a gamer, that one always struck me as especially odd and based on confirmation bias. It’s just not especially unusual to choose an opposite sex avatar, even in games that give you a choice (and many still don’t and you have to play as a male character)…and most gamers are likely familiar with dudes going ‘I chose a female character because if I’m going to stare at someone’s ass for 50 hours…’ (the reverse does apply, women just admit it directly less often). It would also very much depend on the type of games you were playing (a lesbian might decide to pick a male avatar in some games with romance options that lacked same sex options, for example). The very vagueness of the claim shows it up as more scripted soundbite than based on personal experience.
Maybe that’s a way in for parents? To keep asking for more specific details?
(I tend to choose to play as a male character (am female, play JRPGs), they’re more likely to have the angsty depressive basketcase vibe I find relatable. XD)
I think that the transgender movement among young people is a response to the failure of societies to change enough in response to the feminist movement. Even if we can say ‘girly girl’ we are still associating a certain pattern of likes and dislikes with being female. There is much to sort out; the crisis it has generated among so many of us as I see here with parents like Lily and girls like Jessie, and among lesbians and feminists seeing so much of our creations undermined, is also leading us to a deeper knowledge of what we are fighting and how to get out of it. The female body, our grounded selves, being present with that body and our desires and our reactions to patriarchy and abuse, can be overwhelming but is also a way through. The more we can be present to ourselves and other women creating space for us to be all we are, we can push patriarchy away and start healing. It may sound trite or even like, this is not news, that’s what second wave lesbian feminism was all about, which is true but many of us are discovering these possibilities for the first time and they offer a lot of hope.
Reblogged this on keeva99.
Lily, I just read your post in one fell swoop. Whew! Your daughter is so incredibly fortunate to have such a strong, independently minded and supportive mother.
Those sleepless nights in front of a screen…..tell me about it! You’ve put together a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to think critically, rather than hand over their loved one to the officially sanctioned ”support groups”.
In fact I am thinking of having my son look at what you have written before he goes off to University. He tells me that he hasn’t looked up anything on line about transgenderism, nor has he talked to anyone other than myself and his therapist about what has happened to his father. I would really like him to make some steps towards being able to process it all, rather than staying in denial and holding on to some dark secret.
Thank you and your daughter for sharing this.
Thank you so much! It’s wonderful to think that my article might help others. I hope your son is happy to read it.
I want to say this: THANK YOU. I am.glad you rescued your daughter, kept questioning her. Who would want to see their child cut off perfectly healthy body parts, take hormones, then regret their decision 4 years later and detransition stuck with no breasts, a scratchy hormone induced voice and unwanted extra body and facial hair for life?
Many of these young girls ARE detransitioning once they “wake up” , find the REAL medical costs on their body from testosterone and the fact they will never look like Arnold Schwartzenegger in his iron pumping youth.
But here’s whats disturbing me: PFLAG is the ONLY game in this town. They put on Pride, and all the queers and some of their straight family members go there. I seen more Lesbians around my age there than I have the entire 3 years I been in this town.
But EVERYONE is bending over backwards for the mostly trans youth. The mother hen has her trans “son” with her who won’t say a word the mother does all the talking and how will the president the lesbian of the group keeps going on about how wonderful it is for them to be there and to honor their trans son and daughter no discussion of lesbian issues whatsoever even though lesbians are in the majority every single one of them is bending back over please trans kids and it’s very sad because they don’t really passed in any way there was one lesbian I connected with around my age who was crying and crying and crying with her young son who had what look like hormone-induced breasts to me I actually couldn’t figure out was that her daughter who wanted to be a dude or a son who wanted to be a woman but I believe it was her son and immediately the president came by and said oh you’re going to love it when your daughter fully transitions because the mother had referred to the child as her son and I knew she was having a very very very hard time with it so I told her I would let’s get together at Starbucks and talk just the two of us away from this trans affirming crowd who can’t even mention the word lesbian or Dyke I used the term Dyke for myself and I couldn’t handle it but yet on the other hand I’m supposed to accept that these young children in their teens are what they say they are and already they’re talking hormones and surgeries and doctors and trans people getting the help they need. Thanks so much for speaking out this is what the youth needs adults who are honest with them and not feeding into the delusion.
THEY couldnt handle ME using the term Dyke, yet the rest of us are SUPPOSED TO get behind all these gender issues, and kids transitioning back and forth…having surgical MANipulation done to their young healthy bodies…and hormones or hormone blockers with longterm sometimes irreversible effects.
Transgender trend is scarier than eating disorders; at least in the latter case, society at large doesn’t tend to praise and advertise it.
What I don’t get is how can a rational individual with a “strong grasp on reality” buy into trans ideology? Especially when presented with an alternative (gender critical) view. I mean, trans ideology makes no logical sense at all! Maybe most people are sheep and don’t question the dogma, but what of the otherwise analytical, smart people who nonetheless support genderism and reject critical discussion???
I like to think I wouldn’t have succumbed to this craze if I were growing up now, but the movement is so powerful, it makes me doubt myself. I’ve had a male alter-ego, vocally denied being a girl, emulated masculinity, claimed I wished I was a man etc etc since I could walk and talk basically, but… I’d heard of “sex-change” operations and understood they were cosmetic. Only going back in time and having been born male would have made me a man. (And then in my mid-20s I slowly realised that women are not in fact a lower class of person and FUCK SOCIETY for telling me what to do and how to be, which turned out to be super liberating.)
But jeez. It’s not just the needlessly medicalised kids that transgender trend is answerable for, it’s that it celebrates everything I’ve (socially, mentally) fought against my whole life: omnipresent pressure of moronic, regressive, sexist gender expecations.
I was so surprised that Jessie, as an intelligent and articulate young woman, brought into the whole idea. I think that one of the things about a cult – and IMO transtopia is quite definitely a cult – is that anyone can get caught up in it.
I’ve been reading “Cults in Our Midst” lately, and one of the points that struck me is that it really is anyone that can get drawn in. The more intelligent you are, the more you internalize all the cult-arguments and become skilled at defending the ideology. It makes it harder to talk or reason them out of it. Scary phenomenon.
Your description seems to cover not just young people who are trans trending, but the entire social-justice-warrior left–as well as doctors, psychologists, teachers, and parts of the US and UK Government apparatus. Lots of intelligent people have been drawn in.
Very true. I’ve read that book as well because I was drawn into a cult a few years ago by a love interest who had a masters degree. I have a degree from a top university in my state as well. He was a very intelligent person, well-meaning I’m sure, and kind. By the end of our involvement his cultic beliefs had convinced him I was a terrible person. I ended up joining the same cult a little while later because I figured “Well, he’s so smart, everything he says about me and the world must be true”. The thing is, a lot of these cults aren’t just religious wackos. Some of them use a warped interpretation of science to justify their beliefs. In my case, I was in a political cult that used dialectical and historical materialism to justify its ideology and treatment of people. In the case of trans, the big players have monopolized on the fact that very few people have a thorough understanding of neurology, so kids, parents and the media are going to very easily buy into something with a buch of jargon that sounds nice. Anyone can call victim, and I’ve read interviews and watched videos with experts in the field of mental health who said that a lot of these teenagers are basically highly intelligent sensitive people who feel like they don’t fit into the sick world in which we live. I’ve been saying this for awhile now, the cult is targeting teenagers because teenagers are at a crossroads at this point in their lives: they are graduating from high school, finding out who their real friends are, maybe going through trauma after getting kicked out when their parents find out they are gay, losing other loved ones to suicide brought on by mental illness, trying to figure out what to do with their lives in terms of a career, etc. All of that boils down to vulnerability, which the cult can then exploit.
The main difference I think between the trans cult and most other cults is that there seems to be this emphasis on social media, and while there is a broad array of activists out there preaching to the choir, there doesn’t seem to be any actual main institution with a particular hierarchy of leaders we can point to as the culprits, the way we can with Scientology or Evangelical fundamentalists. It seems like there is this huge amalgamation of nebulous institutions at the head of this, which makes it a lot harder to take down. Who can we say is the “leader” of this cult? Well, we can point to a social group, hetero white middle class males, but we can’t point to any one particular person or handful of people orchestrating everything. It’s insane. It’s like cultural mass hysteria. I don’t like to use the word “hysteria” because of its misogynist implications, but what other terms can we use? This is definitely a cult in our midst.
Many mothers I have contact with whose daughters are in this situation, including mine, are extremely rational on any other subject. Many are atheists. When I spoke to my nephew, who is 15, about my daughter, he told me that you cannot discuss anything trans and the kids in his advanced classes are the biggest cheerleaders for the trans movement. Both of my nephews, 13 and 15, know that this movement is crazy, but they’re also aware that there is a gag order about discussing it. They are just taught to go along with it.
“…but they’re also aware that there is a gag order about discussing it. They are taught to just go along with it.”
Brilliantly put, Dorothy.
Glad to hear your young nephews are so astute and wise to it.
When people are not free to discuss something, whether it is the Emperor’s new clothes; or his lack of XX chromosomes or female socialization within a patriarchy, it is also a form of thought-stopping. It limits critical thinking and reality checking. As we can see, rare are the individuals who cannot be inculcated where censorship of thought and word is the new normal.
When silenced, and no one can talk to each other about their perceptions, it is much easier to implant ideas they would otherwise discuss, question, and reject.
I think transactivists have figured out how to maximize the use of fear as a manipulation tool.
– Fear of being labeled “transphobic,” (“an irrational fear of trans people”) because it is used to label those who question the irrationality of trans ideology as being “irrational,” themselves, for doing so(!)
– And because “transphobic” is implied to also be rooted in bigotry.
So people fear speaking up because they will be labeled “irrational” and “bigots,” meaning they would lose all social credibility as such.
The trans/activists also frighten people by accusing them of causing the deaths and suicides of trans people for so much as *accidentally* “misgendering” someone, let alone disagreeing with them about trans ideology.
And no one wants to be responsible for someone killing themselves or being killed. So they fall silent.
Health, social work professionals, and activists frighten parents and youth into believing that delaying transition will prevent them from “passing” as adults, increasing their likely of rejection, ridicule, suicide or murder.
K-12 schools are, apparently, afraid of being sued.
Skeptics amongst academics, healthcare and social work professionals, media organizations, and journalists, are afraid of being mass protested, branded and fired.
Politicians and government employees are afraid of being targeted, mass protested, not being electable, or fired.
The Democratic Party and Greens are completely held hostage by the LGBT organizations to support anything and everything they demand.
Feminists and lesbians are afraid to try to organize women-only events and spaces, such as discussions or dances, because someone (usually a woman) will raise a stink on behalf of letting men in, especially men in dresses. This has been undercutting the women’s and lesbian communities for decades now, adversely affecting feminist lesbians’ ability to meet eachother for friendship, romantic relationships, or political organizing.
Lesbian performers are afraid of playing at women-only events such as Michigan Women’s Music Festival because they will be black-listed from other paying gigs, such as Lesbian Pride Festivals/Dyke Marches.
Feminists and especially lesbian feminists fear being labeled “TERFs” and having their employers contacted and encouraged to fire them; and fear being murdered by transactivist crazies influenced by the ubiquitous online threats to “Kill all TERFs” and “Die in a Fire.”
Gender-critical people are afraid to sign online petitions pushing back against trans ideology and actions, because some have had their employers contacted who were encouraged to fire them, and they were indeed fired.
Have I missed anything?
Lily,
Wonderful article!
The story of my child “coming out” mimics Jesses. It has been almost a year. (She is almost 16.)
At first, I was a terrified mess. I allowed for the pronoun change, name change and binder. How I regret the lot!
After a few months, my husband and I explained to her that we did not agree with her self diagnosis. As per her request, and the fact that she is doing great in every other aspect of her life, i.e. school, extra curricular activities, w/ family and friends… we try to stay away from the trans conversations. We both use the first letter of her name (same letter for old and new name) as her name and a pronoun. Not her favorite thing we do, but we explained it’s the best we can do while not agreeing. Our entire community and family is very respectful. Most of them know how we feel and agree with us. All of her friends use the new name and pronouns. Drives me bonkers, but that is the least of my concerns. At times it seems like she is coming out of it… starting to shave again, being cool with living in the girls dorms when talking about college and a few other minor events. My husband, who has been absolutely fantastic and NEVER believed this was anything more then a teen phase, thinks we should let it ride itself out. I have been trying my best to follow his lead. As hard as it is for me to admit, he has been pretty spot on with the entire thing so far.
She did receive a “rule-out” ASD diagnosis from a psychologist. (Meaning she shows some of the characteristic traits, yet needs additional testing for a firm diagnosis.) No need for that. The doctor agreed that those are the exact characteristics that could be causing her to believe she is trans.
We have not yet discussed that with her. Again, we have been staying away from all trans-related conversation.
With all that said, what would be your first course of action at my current juncture?
I would watch Peachyoghurt’s YouTube video ‘Gender for Dummies in 5 minutes’ and ask her what she thinks about it. I’d also ask her to define what makes a woman, without using the words ‘woman’ or ‘feel’ – if you are denying biology, it isn’t possible. Also, the Social Construct Masterpost that I link to in my article is very clear and hard to argue with. Good luck!
This was a most incredible read, with so many great (and shocking) sources linked to within. I’m glad to hear there’s been a happy ending, though I wish more stories would end like this. So many people I know have obediently swilled down the Trans, Inc., Kool-Aid and seem to bring up issues like “gender identity” and so-called “TERFs” just to show off what awesome, liberal, accepting, enlightened, modern activists they are. Sadly enough, just about everyone I know who parades around these views is also very science-minded and skeptical in other areas. It’s like they’re going from a checklist of things they have to support, with a second checklist of everything they think they’re supposed to denounce, and never thinking critically about certain of these things.
I started out wanting to be supportive of all this, just as I’ve always supported other oppressed, minority groups, but I gradually got more and more disturbed. So many things didn’t seem right. Even after I discovered the gender-critical blogosphere, I was still going back and forth about whether or not I believed what these opposing viewpoints presented. It’s probably a blessing in disguise I haven’t had kids yet (though I’m still hoping I have at least one before my remaining years of relative fertility run out!). I’d be so worried to have a child in this climate where everyone is all “Rah-rah trans!” I’ve always said I wouldn’t know what to do if I ever had a daughter who was a total girly-girl instead of a so-called tomboy like I am, though even if I did have a daughter with interests and behavior more like mine, there’d be a fear of people convincing her she’s not really a girl after all.
Thanks for this both of you. I’m currently going through the same thing with my daughter. She’s just turned 13, and started saying she is a transgender boy for about 6 months. (My first rant is somewhere in the about page comments) I okayed the new name because it’s gender neutral and it’s a cute name. I let her request a pronoun change but made sure she understands that she can’t expect us to get it right for at least a few years. Personally I don’t really worry about it, and luckily she doesn’t take offense at being “misgendered”. She’s also said that she’s not in the wrong body but she thinks she needs to change it to trans male to feel more comfortable. I said okay I love you no matter what you do, I think you’re fine as a female but when you’re 18 and you still want to transition and have the money to pay for it then great. I had originally sought counseling but realized right away that they were recommending transition NOW and I quickly left, found a therapist who agrees that she needs to be an adult before doing anything except exploring the dysphoria and developing coping skills. Actually my daughter wants to wait until she’s an adult now (not at first) because she says she doesn’t know if she wants to have kids yet. So that’s a relief. I can only hope that this is a decision that she will make that’s truly best for her, with all of the available information 5 or more years from now. I’m feeding the alternative ideas and campaigning for be yourself with the least medical treatment. I say that adolescence is a time for change and no matter what she does she’s going to change as she becomes an adult. Like all humans do. Maybe she will do it, but I’m not going to make that decision for her.
This sounds really hopeful. Your child seems to be happy to adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach and the fact that she is even considering offspring at this point suggests she is not entirely in denial of her female body. I so hope she manages to reconcile.
Thank you, I’m feeling much more positive than I was a few months ago. It was terrible and there was so much fighting, even though I don’t have a problem with transgender adults. But I don’t think it’s something to decide quickly either. It’s possible that it’s not always going to be as smooth as this week, but it’s good for now. I’m firm in my decision though, and so is her father. It’s not happening any time soon.
Also, I brought up the race question and haven’t gotten a good reason as why it’s not a similar issue. Race is a social construct based on physical appearance and geography, as is the new definition of gender!
This was a really solid read and as a mother of teens incredibly refreshing. I’ve a question for Jessie – what do you believe was at the core of your relationship with your mother that meant you didn’t shut her out; that even though she was in your face the dialogue kept going? Cheers.
that’s a good question, I think that me and my mum had always had a good relationship wherein we listened to each other even if we didn’t agree, although there were times when this wasn’t the case. I also believe that it was partly to do with my internet/phone restrictions as if i didn’t listen to what she had to say and have conversations with her, I wouldn’t get my phone, whereas if I did there was a good chance I’d get an hour or so on my phone afterwards to talk to my friends and go on social media, etc. xx
Hi Jessie thank you so much for you and your mom posting all this . Last night when I could not sleep,th8nk8ng about my daughter, I think I finally figured out what is going on with her. I posted recently that my 21 year old daughter about a year and a half ago started saying she hated men, and that she was trans. She has never ever shown any desire in her dressing or socializing and her tons of male crushes and relationships that this was evIdent. I have a decent relationship with her and we talk about many th8ngs but very little about what is going on with her as she shuts me down. She told me the other day that she is not a woman,even though she b8nds less frequently and has grown her hair,wears make up and still has celebrity male crushes. She has also put on weight which she has never had a problem with,I now think that is to hide her female body. I also believe that she is rejecting her female self and body due to her failed disappointing relationships with men, and the anguish and humiliation she has recieved from men giving her too much attention out in public. I think she feels like she is protecting and insulating herself from all this if she rejects all her feminiinity. She has diagnosed herself as trans as that seems to fit in with her ideals, even though she says she sometimes feels like a man,but does not want to change her female name, nor take testosterone and not talking about surgery. I would love to speak to her about this but know she won’t listen. I am planning to text this to her as she always reads her texts . I am really worried that she will get angry at me but feel that hopefully something will click in her head.
I am writing to you as you are closer to her generation and just wondered what your reaction would be if I texted this to you. Thanks Cecille
Thanks Jessie, I’m hoping my SIL can read this post and the comments and especially your experiences as she works through the transitioning of her eldest child FtT. I’ve also shared the post with my own teens and your commentary and talked about how we go round with this – my eldest has supported a close friend through anorexia, which is supported in social media and socially – and was incredibly frightening. I really appreciate your own openness – having a bunch of moms quizzing you is going to be well tiring 🙂 I wish you all the very best.
Dunno if anyone mentioned this yet, but I just wanted to point out this really important quote at the very end in Jessie’s testimony: “When I arrived at my college, making friends wasn’t my primary motive, however the friends I have made are almost all female, and I don’t think I would have those friends if I had been trying to fit in as a boy.”
It really just goes to show how much patriarchy divides women and isolates us. Think of how isolated and lonely Jessie would have been living as a boy in total hatred of everything that makes her a female. Think of how that self-hatred could have spread to other women and all the women (especially lesbians) she would have been alienating in her social life with these cultic beliefs about gender. I’m so glad that Jessie’s mother was able to get through to her. And it really just goes to show how important female solidarity is when she came into contact with her friend Hazel again. Imagine if Jessie had been drawn into the cult further–if her mother hadn’t challenged the assumptions at all–and had decided Hazel was “transphobic” and then shunned her… how different Jessie’s life might be right now.
I think this testimony also really shines a light on just how much money this cult really has. It’s right up there with Scientology in my opinion. No one can touch it, not even the fucking government, and in many cases the government is in bed with this ideology. Utterly f****ing CRAZY. The government, largely made up of patriarchal institutions, has never been in bed with radical feminism the way it is with the gender cult, and never will be. Because radfem is the ONLY ideology that challenges literally every single horrible thing on earth, from religious tyranny, to environmental destruction, to economic breakdown, to sexism, to homophobia, to racism, etc radical feminism is the only ideology able to call these things out for what they are, and so it remains the most dangerous ideology to espouse. Make no mistake, when the trans community shouts slurs and sends us death and rape threats, this isn’t hyperbole. It’s good ol’ misogyny, which will NEVER be called into question by patriarchy, and that’s why Jessie’s mom had to do sooooo much digging before she came across an alternative view. Think about it, what other self-proclaimed “civil rights” movement besides trans has had such an easy time, getting literally everything handed to it on a silver platter in so little amount of time? Well, only a movement run by straight white males could achieve such a thing under patriarchy, and that’s exactly why radical feminism must challenge it.
I’m so glad Jessie escaped this harmful ideology and is living her life as a the strong lesbian woman she is meant to be 🙂 Bucking gender expectations is the hardest thing a woman can do.
Dunno if anyone mentioned this yet, but I just wanted to point out this really important quote at the very end in Jessie’s testimony: “When I arrived at my college, making friends wasn’t my primary motive, however the friends I have made are almost all female, and I don’t think I would have those friends if I had been trying to fit in as a boy.”
It really just goes to show how much patriarchy divides women and isolates us. Think of how isolated and lonely Jessie would have been living as a boy in total hatred of everything that makes her a female. Think of how that self-hatred could have spread to other women and all the women (especially lesbians) she would have been alienating in her social life with these cultic beliefs about gender. I’m so glad that Jessie’s mother was able to get through to her. And it really just goes to show how important female solidarity is when she came into contact with her friend Hazel again. Imagine if Jessie had been drawn into the cult further–if her mother hadn’t challenged the assumptions at all–and had decided Hazel was “transphobic” and then shunned her… how different Jessie’s life might be right now.
I think this testimony also really shines a light on just how much money this cult really has. It’s right up there with Scientology in my opinion. No one can touch it, not even the fucking government, and in many cases the government is in bed with this ideology. Utterly f****ing CRAZY. The government, largely made up of patriarchal institutions, has never been in bed with radical feminism the way it is with the gender cult, and never will be. Because radfem is the ONLY ideology that challenges literally every single horrible thing on earth, from religious tyranny, to environmental destruction, to economic breakdown, to sexism, to homophobia, to racism, etc radical feminism is the only ideology able to call these things out for what they are, and so it remains the most dangerous ideology to espouse. Make no mistake, when the trans community shouts slurs and sends us death and rape threats, this isn’t hyperbole. It’s good ol’ misogyny, which will NEVER be called into question by patriarchy, and that’s why Jessie’s mom had to do sooooo much digging before she came across an alternative view. Think about it, what other self-proclaimed “civil rights” movement besides trans has had such an easy time, getting literally everything handed to it on a silver platter in so little amount of time? Well, only a movement run by straight white males could achieve such a thing under patriarchy, and that’s exactly why radical feminism must challenge it.
I’m so glad Jessie escaped this harmful ideology and is living her life as a the strong lesbian woman she is meant to be 🙂 Bucking gender expectations is the hardest thing a woman can do.
I agree with what you say. Thank you for your comment. x
What a great, comprehensive post — great collection of links all in the same spot. I was aware of all of them already, but that is a great service, to have them so handy. Thank you both.
Lily, do brace yourself, because many will inform you that Jessie has merely been browbeaten into the cis-closet (so to speak) and will inevitably re-emerge as publicly trans as soon as she gets out from under your thumb. Meanwhile, of course, you’re doing damage to her psyche by “non-acceptance,” and possibly pushing her toward total estrangement from you (at the very least) and depression and suicide (at the catastrophic worst).
That’s the narrative. I could write the comments myself. (I am positive 4thwave is getting them and not passing them through.)
Advocates and allies HAVE to believe that “gender” is immutable and inborn and that you can’t stop being trans. There’s utter confidence that a physiological mechanism will be identified eventually. This is the only argument that has made the media so enchantable and the schools so tractable — that “trans” is a disease that you are born with, and that there’s no cure, but transition might possibly help. That denial of biology and history is affirming and is required so you can become your authentic self. My kid has told me numerous times “I didn’t ask for this,” as you’d say about having cancer or a disability. The entire on-line world has told her that it’s kind of a simple paradigm: you have a disease, you fix it, anybody who tries to slow you down is phobic and unsupportive and not a good person.
The clear problem / clear solution framework is so much more appealing to the kid/teen/young adult mind than the squishy notions of gender as a social construct, and trans as an identity you can ADOPT, for whatever reason. Adopting that identity can come with varied benefits, depending on the individual. But identifying is a choice. And a lot of folks strongly believe that trans, rather, comes upon you and definitely is not a choice that anyone would ever … choose. Nevertheless, even for my kid, I clearly see how her internet-fueled self-identification has let her do an end run around her maturing female body and the unwanted sexual implications of relationships with males. It’s given her permission to check out of a lot of “girl stuff” that she never liked or was interested in. It’s given her a way to make some sense of herself, in the absence of role models or public discourse that make room for more than one way to be “boy” or “girl.”
Anyway. Great post. Wishing both of you the best. Jessie, you keep being the fantastic, powerful, strong woman you were born to be. Mom, you keep doing the same. May we all find hope.
Jessie and I have both heard it already: that I bullied her into ‘being female again’ or that I brainwashed her, that I have somehow stopped her from being openly trans when she truly is at heart. The other thing we hear, of course is that she was ‘never really trans in the first place’ so her story somehow doesn’t count. I’m braced! 🙂 Thank you for your kind words.
Thank you so much Jessie and Lily for that insightful story. Now I know I am doing the right thing by my daughter. She is 15, currently wants to be identified as a Male name, prefers they, them pronouns. We have decided not to buy into this. We have shortened her birth name to an initial for now, which still sounds like a female name. I find myself nodding with you Lily. Everything you have described, the outbursts I have had with my daughter, I even mentioned the word cult. I am one who knows a lot about cults, as I grew up in one. And everything my daughter has said and done so far, it’s tantamount to cult like thinking.
She is very vulnerable. She has been bullied by her peers for being a lesbian. I think this is why she wants to trans, because then she would be accepted as a straight male, instead of a gay female. Although of course she is telling me that this is not the case, I trust my intuition. Internet, omg, how do I remove it from her? She has already been down that road. I have even blocked certain websites from my ISP so she does not get even more confused. But I can only block 20 on the broadband shield. I took over her facebook account, only for her to instantly make up another one whilst visiting her cousin, with the male name. It’s so frustrating.
I want her to know that woman can be strong amazing beings, not just attached to the kitchen sink, pushing out babies and wearing pink with feathers, and glitter and glamour. That to me is not what defines a woman. A woman to me is someone with female parts, but can be glittery, but can also love football, can also love climbing trees, can also love gazing at the stars and be scientific, can love star wars < (that one is me) and equally the same for men, to embrace their masculinity, but also their sweet feminine side without having to change anything. Learn to drive the body you were born with, love what you love and rip off those stinking labels.
If there has to be one label we are attached to, it's human. We are all human beings and we do not need to change a single thing, because we are amazing just the way we are. Thank you for giving me hope in this challenging time. Could I possibly have a moment of your time to explore things further, to check my behaviour towards my daughter, so she takes the right route, stays my daughter and does not further fuel her delusions? Thanks again. xx
Removing or restricting a young person’s internet access is very controversial but I feel it was essential to helping Jessie. In fact, Jessie says so herself in one of her replies to an earlier comment (above). Unless you think your child is going to run away or harm themselves, it will almost certainly help. Turn off your wifi at night. Change the passwords daily. Buy your child a phone without internet and allow them access to the internet only at certain times, or after talking with you for a while, or going for a walk somewhere peaceful. It is really, really hard but it will help. We all want to be friends to our children, but sometimes they need us to prioritise parenting. So many of these trans-identifying girls are lesbians and it is not at all ‘fashionable’ to be a lesbian at the moment. Being trans is very fashionable. I have a friend whose 14 year old son now identifies as a girl. His school has changed his pronouns (without telling his mother, of course) and he has gone from being bullied to being one of the most popular children in his class. He says it is because he is now his authentic self. We are fighting a very large monster here. I love your phrase, “learn to drive the body you are born with,” it’s very eloquent. I have mentioned several times Peachyoghurt’s YouTube video ‘Gender for Dummies in 5 minutes’. This is an excellent place to start discussion with your child. Good luck.
Genuine question, as I don’t have kids and some of these modern parenting trends confuse me: Why would removing or restricting a child’s internet access be considered controversial? Do other parents say it’s wrong? I’ve heard some people claim it’s abusive, and I don’t understand the justification as I don’t see internet access as a right or necessity. I’m not that old, but when I grew up, threats to take away television access were common, and I have a mother-friend who uses that with her kids(who are all too young to be online).
it is not at all ‘fashionable’ to be a lesbian at the moment
I am afraid that it is much worse than that. Very rapidly, in the course of just a few years, lesbians have become heavily stigmatised.
There is a lot of what can only be called ‘hate speech’ (and I use that term with care), particularly on sites like Tumblr and Twitter. Many of the people spewing this vicious stuff seem to be quite young. At least some of them are young women.
Lesbians are now routinely attacked for not being sexually interested in ‘transgender women’, in other words males, and even for not being sexually interested in males (it is not cool to be ‘monosexual’).
There is also plenty of toxic stuff coming directly from the transactivist lobby, positioning lesbians as perverts and predators, as well (of course) as ‘transphobes’ and ‘terfs’.
Lesbians and gay men are demonised over an entirely fictional version of modern homosexual history, in which we are supposed to have appropriated a movement that was originally established by ‘transgender women’.
And then there is the constant insistence that any lesbian whose personal style is butch or even moderately androgynous is ‘really trans’ and should acknowledge it.
In more than 45 years as a self-aware lesbian, I have never witnessed hostility on this scale and with this degree of intensity.
We just found an emulator for those old consoles we used to play when we were young. We have installed it onto her laptop, and last night before bed she was playing with the old Legend of Zelda and even used her birth name. (Step in the right direction?) I hope so. She never even went on internet for very long. Just quick catch up with school peers and then playing games. I am thinking distraction techniques might work. They worked when she was younger when she was up to something that could cause her harm, or if she wanted something that she could not necessarily have (like that glass of wine at 2 years old no sweetie, that’s mums juice lol). If I can distract her long enough until she has figured herself out, without the influence of cult like speech from the trans community (not all of them just some of them) then that would be great. She loves art work, so getting her out and about exploring her natural surroundings and capturing the beauty of the earth in her art will also help. It’s certainly not going to be easy, but worth it. I need to stick to my time schedule of turning wifi off at 9 on a school night and 10 on a non school night. Here is hoping we can turn this around on it’s head. I also showed her the Gender for dummies clip. I think having a strong female who is quite happy to be a woman, but wants to break down the gender social construct we find ourselves living in, then that will be great. Maybe our daughters can help achieve this, with a little guidance and help. Fingers crossed.
This is what courageous love looks like!
This was a great post, thank you. I so identified with you Lily, all that you felt, and all that you said did. My daughter is still working her way through this issue. Last year she came out as trans, same story most of the moms have here. We are not doing pronouns and I told her while I am sorry if she feels dysphoric, I will not support her delusion that she is a man. She is potentially heading off to college next year, but I will be following your approach. No college registered as someone else. She may not go at all if I don’t feel she is mentally ready, with this and other issues she has. I know as mothers we cannot give up even though we fell our daughters aren’t listening to us. I wonder if think your daughter would have come to the same conclusion without her friend who had detransitioned being part of her realization that what you were saying was right?
I like to think Jessie was starting the find her way through the trans-maze before she bumped into her friend. She had thought very hard about the whole ‘identifying as black’ or ‘identifying as a cat’ theories and how ludicrous she found those ideas. She was also understanding how gender is a social construct which varies between cultures. Of course, I can’t be sure, and when she bumped into Hazel she was still calling herself a boy. Peer influence is very strong. I think at very least the critical background I gave her meant she was ready to listen to Hazel.
Those of us who are nongendered and asexual (or at least non[practising]sexual until we hit a certain age and the hormone production stops, woohoo) (‘celibate’ has connotations I don’t want to implicate) should be more vocal, more present.
Hello. I’m about your daughters age(a bit younger even), similar situation, and questioning. I’ve been looking for people to talk to but it’s hard to find people. Most people I’ve been able to talk to end up not responding soon after and I never get a message back. Idk, they probably are busy and just forgot or something.
I want to ask, is it ok if I could possibly even talk to the girl in this story? I understand if you don’t want me to know her tumblr and such, I’m some stranger on the internet and this is your kid and all. I just really do want to find someone to talk to and get some advice from and i happened to come across this article while doing research on the internet.
I do understand if you say no, or even just don’t respond. I hope to hear back though.
Thank you
hey! its Jessie (the girl in the post), if you want to contact me to talk, my tumblr account is waterparkkx, just dm me and I’ll reply asap xx
Hello,
My name is Sasha and I’m the gender-critical therapist from Texas mentioned in your piece. I wanted to first clarify that I do online therapy all over the world, but in this case, I’m so glad to see that you helped Jessie with your persistence and incredible dedication to research, learning, and ultimately, the truth.
This article has such an abundance of helpful links and resources, and it’s clear that you’ve just dedicated so much of yourself to helping your daughter. I am really touched by the outcome of this convoluted and fascinating journey.
It’s so bizarre that I only know of a small handful of other mental health professionals questioning this ideology. As Lily mentioned, I believe this house of cards will crumble and there will be a lot of confused young people, parents, and therapists who have to reconcile what’s happened. Jessie’s story is truly a hopeful one. Thanks also to everyone who made such thoughtful comments. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading.
I will be sharing this piece with some of my clients’ parents – I know it will be a valuable resource for them.
I wish you were close!! Any chance your in Boston?? The gender critical therapist are non existent. I need someone who is going to make my daughter think realistically and not this dream world. All they do is tell me “I need to be the accepting one” and they try to change MY mind. Not hers.
Scared mom of teen – any way we can connect? My child is male but same situation. He is 12. Im in boston area too.
Hi there,
Sorry to hear about your daughter. Actually, I do online therapy anywhere in the US. You can look at my site if you are interested, and use the contact form there to get in touch.
http://www.inspiredteentherapy.com
You are doing a wonderful thing. Thanks. I would love to get in contact with you, but I think I have managed to get someone from here in the UK who is gender critical. xx
That’s great! I’m glad you found someone. Best of luck for you and your child 🙂
Sasha, I’m so happy to hear that my article might be able to help some of your clients, and give hope to their parents. You’re doing wonderful work and I wish you all the best. It’s good to know you do worldwide online consultations: there are very few openly gender critical health professionals out there!
I just want to join in thanking both of you for sharing. Reading this made me slightly uncomfortable because unlike Lily, while I have been clear that I do not think my daughter is a boy, I have been willing to use her selected male name and male pronouns partly in response to a suicide attempt, and partly because it just felt bad to see her pain every time I avoided names and pronouns. My child, who is 13, is pretty seriously depressed and although she now uses a male name and pronouns at home and at school that depression remains a fog that makes it hard for her to function. I am hopeful that she will begin to see that being trans is not at the root of her mental health issues and thus become less attached to it as an identity. She has been so fragile that we have largely avoided talking about gender identity at all but as an imperfect mother I slip and make comments in response to things she says that remind her that I think her self diagnosis is a species of socially acceptable self-harm and self loathing rather than a reflection of her true self. Recently when she was in a very low place and was furious at me for limiting her access to her phone she asked me to leave her room because it hurts so much when she thinks about the disrespectful things I say (e.g. “sometimes I think that you want a reason to hate your body for the rest of your life.”). After acknowledging that I understand that it would be better to have open conversations about this, I tried to remind her openly of how I feel and that I am conflicted because I believe her belief needs challenging. When I tried to describe what Jessie shared here she just started shouting at the top of her lungs “stop it, I don’t want to hear another word.” To me that showed just how unsure she is of her own diagnosis but I am guessing she saw herself as acting in self defense. When I checked her tumblr today I saw she had reposted something with the tag line: when u try to tell ur parents about a problem but they end up yelling at you. I don’t know for sure if that was in reference to our exchange but I found it ironic as I was using a super quiet calm voice and she was literally shrieking at me. She did calm down and I was able to feed her some comfort food (cinnamon toast) and help her complete her homework, and remind her that whatever my failings I am her Mom and she still needs me. Sorry to vent, but I mostly just wanted to say thank you for sharing your stories — it really does give me some hope.
Your not alone!!! The words of your daughter are exactly my 13 yr olds words. I swear they learn it all online on what to say. I could have wrote your post. Hugs!!
Also with the suicide… I had to call my child’s bluff and put her into the hospital and cbat. I do not call her by other pronouns or a male name. I refuse. Not sure if you have gone that route but it helped us.
I am in a very similar situation as you are. We allowed the name change and I try with pronouns but it’s hard. I just said that I’m going to get it wrong because it’s hard to remember but please don’t take it personally. I’m not going to pursue any medical treatment for transition as long as she’s a minor. But we have started treating depression, and it’s really helping. I’m seeing a slight desistance from the transgender topic, although she hasn’t changed her mind she is less insistent about it. She thinks about other things now. I told her to just enjoy the best of both worlds, as a girl or a transgender boy and when she’s grown she’ll know. It’s not been that simple, there has been months of bitter arguments but the depression treatment with a regular therapist, who believes that transition should happen in adulthood, has helped her a lot. It was hard to find the therapist but we found one. Good luck, you’re not alone!
This is such a complicated issue for these young people. Our approach sounds a bit like your’s: (for an older daughter) – be supportive but neutral; acknowledge that this is something they do actually believe, even if being transgender is probably the least likely reason; focus on all her other identities; get help for her mental health; maintain a positive and loving relationship; slow things down and avoid backing her into a corner. I am now adept at avoiding pronouns altogether!
I am also beginning to taking every opportunity to explain to others how complicated this issue is; so tell your elected representative, tell your doctor, your therapist, your neighbours, your school, otherwise this bizarre regressive social justice experiment with its simplistic message which is sweeping up all these vulnerable youngsters will never get challenged. I have to say that the professionals I have spoken to – psychologist and psychiatrist – are actually deeply concerned by this phenomenon, especially as it affects identity formation; and in relation to self-harm/ coping mechanisms for anxiety.
I am fully supportive of the rights of people who need to live as a transgendered person, after all there is a small possibility that my daughter may be one of them. In fact diagnosing and treating all of these youngsters as transgender when they are not suffering from gender dysphoria but something else, risks harm not only to them but also to those who do suffer from it, when a backlash against inappropriate diagnosis and treatment comes.
It must be so much harder if your child is or has been suicidal, and you must be walking on eggshells. I’m so sorry, I remember so well how much it hurts when you want to help and your child tells you to go away. Jessie also shouted at me sometimes when I was saying something she didn’t want to hear, but I never felt that she was suicidal. I shouted too sometimes. Hopefully the anger is a sign that your daughter is questioning. We are walking a thin line with children caught up in the transcult. They invest so much, so quickly, in hoping that transitioning will be the answer to all their problems: it is hard for them to realise it isn’t a magic wand. For Jessie in the end it seemed like a relief to realise it wasn’t an answer. She became much happier very quickly. I have heard that some children go through a period of mourning when they realise it isn’t the answer they had hoped for, and Jessie may have spent a while in that space too. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say ‘…self diagnosis is a species of socially acceptable self-harm and self loathing rather than a reflection of.. true self’. The difficulty is how to get our children to see this without alienating them or making them feel we don’t care. I wish you all the best.
Losingsleep, our stories are very similar in that I, too, was dealing with concerns of suicide. This was not an idle threat, but something my daughter revealed to me in a really tender moment, and something that preceded the her coming out as trans at the age of 13. For the full year after she came out, there was so much anger directed at me, threats of leaving the house, hating the family, that I was willing to do anything and everything. I was beside myself. As I look back on my journal entries, I wrote about wanting to give up and wondering where I went so wrong. This was not the sweet child that I used to know.
The gender specialists we consulted all said that I HAD to start using the preferred names and pronouns, and that this was the root of it all. In desperation, that is what we did.
Once my daughter felt affirmed by us, our relationship got SO much better. She also started meds for depression and suicidal ideation, which was also part of it. So I get the part about having to walk on eggshells and avoid the gender talk.
How I wish we had just focused on the underlying causes — the depression, the anxiety, the Aspergerish stuff, the not fitting in — then I think the gender would have worked itself out. Instead, we now have another layer to peel away.
Through it all, we also have a therapist to help us (thank goodness the therapist is totally on board with my beliefs) and together we are muddling through this.
Now that I have my relationship back with my daughter — and I am 99% convinced this trans thing is not real — I am developing a plan to slowly and gently chip away at all we have spent the past year affirming.
Just wanted to share my story with you to help give you hope. Hugs to you!!
As I read Lily’s story, I had a growing sense of unease about its authenticity, if not concern about the lack of understanding of NHS services in the UK for children and adolescents (and their parents) experiencing difficulties with gender development.
Lily reels out a panoply of gender criticism with many active links in an uncritical way yet this a complex area where there are many differences in opinions and perhaps less absolutes than either side of the debate would want, and not all the issues she touches on seem directly concerned with Jessie’s immediate position. And even with all her vast research, she seems to fundamentally misunderstand how the NHS works on gender issues and she rather selectively describes links that are on one of the current web pages, yet makes no mention of the NHS Gender Identity Development Services. We can all formulate a view on the helpfulness of the links but most importantly, GIDS is an impartial specialist service that is the only NHS service for children and adolescents in the UK and has strong atecedant history.
Lily says that she did not make an appointment for Jessie to see a doctor or take her to a gender clinic. In fact, in the UK, the specialist NHS gender clinics require, whether adult or under18, a referral from a doctor. The first port of call for a referral would almost always be the GP that the child is registered with not any doctor. Neither can you go to any clinic. NHS gender services in the UK for children and adolescents is provided by The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which service is specialist and national. The Tavistock has developed the NHS GIDS over almost 30 years. Their web page states that “If your child is under 18 and thought to have gender dysphoria, they will usually be referred to a specialist child and adolescent GIC… Most treatments offered at this stage are psychological, rather than medical or surgical . This is because the majority of children with suspected gender dysphoria don’t have the condition once they reach puberty.”
Whilst Jessie was beyond the initial stages of puberty, the GIDS protocols apply to any child or adolescent referred and The Tavistock has long had this position. It does not promote transition and services are centred on the child and the family and an understanding that all cases differ. GnRH analogues are a possibility but by no means a certainty and hormone and surgical intervention is not possible in children in the UK. It’s very surprising Lily is unaware of all this or took no steps to seek a referral, nor does Jessie seem to have been aware notwithstanding her internet access.
It is also odd that Lily’s husband is absent from her narrative as whilst possible, it seems unlikely he was not concerned and involved in decisions about his daughter. It is equally curious that Lily goes on to talk about Jessie registering as Jake at college. Full time education is compulsory in the UK until 18 years and whilst school leavers at 16 can go to a Further Education college, the process is enrolment and would require supporting docs such as birth certificate and proof of qualifications and enrolment would be in the legal name. To change that requires a formal Deed and in the case of children, the Government imposes special requirements, including either parental agreement or a Court Order. Why does Lily seem so unaware of the legal position? Easy to google. For anyone interested, they can read Polly Carmichael’s (Director of GIDS and clinical psychologist) comments on the objectives of GIDS and reactions to increasing referrals.
Lily says that if she had taken Jessie to a gender clinic they would be looking at a very different future including stepping down the road to public transition. But that cannot be said with certainty at all. To reiterate, the only option is The Tavistock and its GIDS out of either London or Leeds. It is worthwhile re-emphasising GIDS is a service aimed at working with children and their families (not children in isolation) and recognising that gender feelings evolve. It’s equally likely that Jessie would come to the same conclusion. Waiting times are now up at around 9 months and the service does not time limit its therapeutic role, although at 17 there may be a transfer to adult services, it is case specific. So Jessie would not be stepping down any road within the time frame of Lily’s narrative.
If this is an authentic story, then if Jessie is happier, that is the main thing and only important thing. However, that seems to have resulted from a fortuitous meeting with Hazel and what if that had not happened? Researching gender criticism and conveying its view was not an impartial exploration by Lily and did not work anyway. Not engaging with specialist and respected NHS services and giving the chance for exploration is arguably a failure in putting the child first.
If this is an invented story for the benefit of an American audience that simultaneously promotes a particular critical view on gender, that is disappointing to put it mildly, as gender identity concerns in children and adolescents and the distress that often arises is a serious matter. That is the case whichever side of the debate you find yourself on. It conflates UK public provision and American private experience. The child should be at the centre and whilst services are being challenged by increased referrals, in the UK it would seem seriously remiss not to seek a referral to The Tavistock and engage with GIDS.
Hi madwillow,
Let me deal with your issues one at a time.
Firstly, you cast doubt on the veracity of our story. This seems to be a common response to anyone who questions the trans narrative. It’s also often claimed that trans-identifying people who commit crimes are ’not really trans’, and likewise children that desist from identifying as trans were ‘never really trans in the first place’. When a mother and daughter come forward with a story that suggests something other than the accepted narrative, there are those who would rather call them liars than accept that there are other outcomes than transition. Our story is true. We have not been paid to tell it. Why would we lie?
Secondly, you say I seem to ‘fundamentally misunderstand how the NHS works on gender issues’. I understand very well that a child needs a referral from their GP to visit the Tavistock, and that the waiting list is long. You say, ‘the only option is The Tavistock and its GIDS out of either London or Leeds’. However, there are numerous self-proclaimed gender specialists, private doctors offering online, telephone or face to face consultations, which often result in hormone prescriptions for young people. I did not make an appointment for Jessie to see our GP to discuss her gender identity, nor did we avail ourselves of these private services. Many parents, having been told that their trans child is likely to kill themselves if their trans identity is not promptly indulged, follow this route.
You say that many treatments offered at this stage are psychological. I agree. That does not necessarily make them harmless. You say that ‘hormone and surgical intervention is not possible in children in the UK’. I beg to differ. Jessie would have been considered too physically mature for puberty blockers. Whilst many youngsters obtain hormones online, or via private doctors, the NHS website itself says that a child of 16 can receive hormone treatment on the NHS. In fact, one of the links in my article shows that children as young as 12 are receiving hormone treatment via the NHS.
Thirdly, the absence of my husband’s involvement in our story seems ‘odd’ to you. My husband – and my other children – are absent from the narrative because I have written about my own experience and Jessie about hers. I do not speak for my husband. For the record, he shares my views on gender as a social construct and sex as unchangeable. He was there for us both, but stayed mostly in the background as he found the whole idea that a lesbian girl could declare herself to be a straight boy completely baffling and surreal. He is a compassionate and loving father and I believe that he has an excellent relationship with all his children.
Fourthly, concerning Jessie’s desire to change her name: you ask ‘why does Lily seem so unaware of the legal position?’ I’m not unaware of the complexities surrounding a legal change of name, but they are pretty much irrelevant when deciding how an educational establishment will address a young person. A school will change a child’s pronouns at the child’s request, and many don’t even consider it necessary to notify the parents. I did not suggest Jessie intended to change her name by deed poll at this point. Had Jessie asked her college teachers to call her Jake and use male pronouns when referring to her, they would have complied. Easy to Google indeed. There is a link in my article which shows this policy is in place in many schools. Her friend Hazel had done exactly this. Jessie’s name on the classroom register would have been Jake; her teachers would have called her Jake. How would this be anything other than ‘a step down the road to public transition’?
Fifthly, you mention the importance of the fortuitous meeting with Hazel and at last we have found something we can agree on! Hazel played a huge part in helping Jessie, and I will be forever grateful to her for that. Of course young people are more inclined to listen to their peers than their parents. However, I do believe the discussions Jessie and I had shared laid a foundation which helped her become open-minded enough to listen to Hazel’s story. Before I spoke to Jessie about the subject, she didn’t know that detransition was ‘a thing’. Luckily for both Jessie and Hazel, reconciliation came before long-term damage had been done. Many girls are not so lucky. What if that had not happened indeed? Who knows.
Your final paragraph starts, ‘If this is an invented story for the benefit of an American audience…’ . Well, what can I say to that? You suggest I am a liar for a second time. You have called our story ‘odd’ and ‘curious’ and claimed that ‘it seems unlikely’. You read our story with ‘a growing sense of unease’. Perhaps, on some level, that was because it is forcing you to question your own presumptions about gender and transition?
They lie, they tell you that you are lying. They put up a picture of reasonableness whiles pushing a an agenda that always points to trans.
You patience and reasonableness are remarkable, well done and I hop you have a very Happy Christmas.
Hi Lily
That your story raises some uncertainties in my mind, for the reasons given, does not mean that I am calling you a liar. I cannot prove one way or another and as you are anonymous, readers will have to draw their own conclusions. Finding your narrative imbalanced (in my view) and raising queries does not equate to my supporting or presuming any particular position.
I don’t disagree that there are private options for adolescents in the UK and did not say as much, clearly there are. But within the NHS the only referral process is to The Tavistock, it is the national centre. Your article makes no mention and is rather dismissive of the NHS and I think that it implies that the NHS supports a trans narrative, although not everyone would agree with that. I still find it strange that you did not seek to engage with the NHS, even as an exploratory step. A referral would not automatically mean cross-sex hormones, the child and adolescent protocols are a staged process, and for very good reasons. The Tavistock and hence NHS does not prescribe hormones before 16 years. Your reference to age 12 is to Helen Webberley in her private (not NHS GP) practice, yet you state NHS. Please let us agree on this point.
I agree that a young person at College could request use of a particular name or pronoun and that the College might oblige. I could also understand parental concern where the gender identity concerns were not being simultaneously explored professionally i.e. It was not part of a staged process. But they could not enrol unless their name had been legally changed and you did not make it clear that you were referring to a request of personal preference.
Whatever the merits of your story or the way you tell it, I don’t think that we can have a situation where young people experiencing gender identity issues have to rely on a particular parental view. I appreciate that you have a strong gender critical view on identity and your story is drafted so as to support it. However, I’m not sure the arguments are as clear cut. I do believe that the NHS has a role to play in providing an impartial service and I think that it was unfair to dismiss existing services in your article without having experienced them, and not to make any reference to GIDS, and I do not agree with not engaging with it. Even if you felt it right for Jessie not to seek NHS support, it is inappropriate to generalise for all children. I do think that we should be supporting a service such as GIDS or is it your position that there ought to be none whatever?
Kind regards.
The privacy and (when requested) anonymity of contributors to 4thWaveNow is always respected and protected. Unlike the trans-parents who see no problem with exposing their children and teenagers to the harsh light of public scrutiny, 4thWaveNow parents realize they have no right to parade their children’s lives before the public. Further, such public scrutiny could do real damage to everyone in the family; something the more public parents of “trans” kids seem not to consider.
There is something you seem to have missed in Lily’s account, something that is common to many of the personal narratives and comments published here: Many parents do not experience or have trust in gender specialists as either “impartial” or in a position to have any real insight into what is really motivating our children to dis-identify with their natal sex. It seems you are unaware of the social media trend that has resulted in a huge increase in the number of teenagers suddenly identifying as transgender. Many parents have rightfully become suspicious of a psychological and medical profession that seems all too ready to accept a young person’s self-proclaimed identity.
If this were not the case, this blog would not even exist. It arose because parents like us did not want to see any reason to hand over our children to the tender mercies of a “professionals” in a system which appears to be motivated more by a modern medical fad and trans-activism than by a search for the underlying reasons why so many young people–particularly young women–are so desperate to abandon themselves.
I don’t know about the legal process of medical treatment in the U.K., because I am one of the Americans who appreciate the “flare” of this story. I’m kidding. I believe that this story is absolutely true. I’m experiencing the same thing here in conservative Texas and I can tell you that within 2 weeks of my 12 year old daughter telling me that she is transgender I was told by gender specialists that I had to plan for transition or I would have a dead daughter instead of an alive son. I started to count how many times I was told this, stopped around 5. I’m not religious. I am liberal. I am an ally to the lgbqt community and I always have been. I have two lifelong transgender friends, one mtf and one ftm, who are my age, who interestingly agree that 12 is way too young to cement the transgender identity. I say interestingly because the only adults who are liberal or not religious conservatives and question the age aspect are actual transgender people that I know. Both immediately started talking about the side effects and different difficulties and how it has been worth it but not easy. Exploring it is fine, even if she transitions as an adult I will be okay if she is informed. But the kids don’t get the entire story. They can’t. This is a child that was turned down for braces because she hasn’t developed the skills to keep her teeth clean enough. I’m not willing to forgo the natural growth process for something that may change. Even if it’s a small chance. I’m not willing to make my daughter a test subject that is used to collect data from for trailblazing gender doctors in order to further their career. I thought it would be a long process, but I was referred to a doctor for puberty blockers within a month. Why would anyone be motivated to make up this kind of story? Not people who are anti-lgbqt. Transing kids is ultimately going to hurt the transgender community, because it’s too easy to do and many of these kids will change their minds. Even puberty suppression,while physically reversible, changes the course of maturity. Psychological treatment that focuses only on gender identity offers a future solution, that they have to have or be suicidal, and that very well won’t be the cure all for body dysphoria. Not everyone wants to go public, nor should they. My daughter lasted about 6 months in public as a boy. She is now okay with waiting and still might do it when she’s grown, but she has realized she doesn’t know if she wants to have kids or not. I’m glad I didn’t out her story because I really don’t know what she’s going to do. It’s her choice, she has to make it as an adult. I’m not comfortable with choosing for her based on how she feels at 12.
You really hit the nail on the head with your observation, ‘I’m not willing to make my daughter a test subject that is used to collect data from for trailblazing gender doctors in order to further their career.’ I feel this very much. This is undoubtedly ground breaking science, from the point of view of eugenics, and surgery, and probably on many levels I cant imagine. Our children are being used as the test subjects for this research, these drugs and these surgical procedures. We are being told not to question it; it is all for the best, but for whose best? If I had thought that transitioning was the best thing for my daughter, of course I would have supported her. Over and over in these accounts I see the word ‘nightmare’ come up. There are strange and dark things going on here and only a few of us seem to have our eyes open to them. It is horrific to think of these confused and questioning children being led into medication and surgery by a culture that is telling them they are wrong, they are not good enough, and they need fixing with drugs and surgery. It is playing out like some science fiction dystopia worthy of Kafka or Orwell.
Do you remember the chapter in Brave New World, the babies who are tortured with electro-shock therapy into compliance? It was just seen as a “normal” thing. People felt uneasy about the direction society was going in, but were too scared to question it. They are trying to make children gender compliant. It’s sick. Any psychologically healthy individual should be able to see this, but we’re all being culturally gaslit into thinking its perfectly acceptable.
Not engaging with specialist and respected NHS services and giving the chance for exploration is arguably a failure in putting the child first. … in the UK it would seem seriously remiss not to seek a referral to The Tavistock and engage with GIDS.
The Head of Psychology at the Gender Identity Development Service, Bernadette Wren, has acknowledged that when it comes to child and adolescent patients GIDS is not operating on any secure foundations. In an article published in 2014 in an academic journal she states:
‘Meaning about transgender is made in families, therapy rooms, schools, peer groups, at medical committees and conferences. We should promote curiosity about the ideas of others within and amongst these groups. We should listen to the contrasting ways of understanding the trans experience and strive to bring them together in new ways. At different times different groups dominate the discourse, while other voices fight to be heard but at a later time perhaps seize the agenda for a while. In the therapy room, therapist and client draw on these different vocabularies and matrices of meaning, and our task is always to resist speaking one dimensionally; this is the reflexive work of therapy. The decision to recommend physical treatment for young people is then a genuinely shared but imperfect decision, involving the client, family, other professionals in the context of a wider cultural world, in which the meaning of trans is constantly shaped and re-shaped, but which rests on no foundation of truth. The therapist is not burdened with needing to be right or certain, but to offer a reflexive and thoughtful space to help clients explore the architecture and borders of their gendered world view.‘ [my emphasis]
Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents
Just checking back here wondering if madwillow has anything to say to my response.
I don’t think madwillow is able to reply since you dismantled every accusation there was. This certainly sounds like someone who works for Tavistock and is trying hard to save their business.
As a parent with a child who has started this somewhat worrying view that she is in the wrong body, and took to slicing at her skin, I did use the NHS in November last year. I took my child to A&E. In there the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAHMS) got involved. My child was assigned a mental health nursing practitioner.
Shortly before she got discharged from the hospital, she spoke to the nurse and told her she felt she was in the wrong body. Over the course of a month, the nurse at the NHS, said that we should start calling her by her preferred pronouns, and her preferred name. She has been referred to the local GID, to which takes 12 months to get into. Gives me plenty of time to reason with her.
But you want to know something? I wish I never bothered now. Because even within the NHS, many nurses and other HCP’s within the NHS are also keen to push the trans-narrative. The narrative of “I’d rather have a living son than a dead daughter.”
The nurse is now discharging her from CAHMS. It’s not a mental health issue according to her. I disagree. Because my daughter on many occasions has said, she is fat, she is ugly. This self negative talk is what has caused my daughter to seek out the trans-narrative online, along with her cousin currently wanting to go MtF.
The self negative talk is what is to blame here. If it was anorexia I was dealing with, then I would be dealing with that as a Mental Health Illness. Just the same as I would be dealing with this trans-narrative, as a Mental Health Illness. That somehow, she has got it into her head that her outer view, self perception is bad and therefore has to change. Just like someone with Anorexia, funnily enough who thinks, they are fat, they are ugly and needs to somehow damage themselves to get to a desired weight, because of what society enforces onto our children through media, through internet and through peer pressure.
I amongst many others, will not conform to this trans-narrative. I am currently working on building up my daughter’s self esteem so that she is confident in herself, so that she loves who she is and accepts herself for what she is. I bet, 100% of all of the children who are going from FtM and MtF have a skewed perception of themselves. They identify themselves in a negative view. They don’t like this negative view. It makes them uncomfortable. Oh but wait. Just like that stupid advert from MYA I can do something to myself to make myself better. I can get breast surgery, I can get a nip and tuck, I can grow a penis in place of a vagina.
Follow the money. These people from MYA and other such companies are doing the world no favours by imposing a view on to people that they are not good enough already.
I have no doubt in Lily and Jessie’s story here. I find it very truthful.
Here, have a listen to this. Maybe it will improve your world view of yourself and others.
It has been a long night, can I edit this in please, wrong video :O xx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXoZLPSw8U8
The safe guarding you describe may exist at Tavistock but I agree that service providers are not safe guarding. My experience included GP who admitted to having no knowledge or experience but googled it in front of me.,a referral to Cahms. The cousellors dismissed my view that ASD was the cause( later proved correct). After twenty minutes I was asked if my objection was religious. By meeting two my daughter in jeans, checked shirt and short hair was described as ‘passing well for a boy ‘ and called by her preferred name. Then as she was not suicidal or what they seemed as self harming she was dismissed from support as no longer in need.
No therapy is better than bad therapy – I can only
I found this website on Christmas night, alone in my room. My now 19 year old daughter suddenly announced she was a male one year ago when returning home for winter break from her first semester at college. She had cut off all of her long hair and was dressed like a boy. She was angry and became violent when my husband and I expressed our shock; she told us that she would be starting “T” as soon as possible and being having top surgery as soon as she could and she expected us to pay for it. In the past year, she began taking hormones, moved in with another FTM transgender student, and came home for winter break this year with facial air on her neck and upper lip (not a beard in any sense yet). She has primarily been angry, and again because violent with my husband and I after any suggestion or comment was made that she was not male and that this was a mistake. She said that the more we disagree or argue with her, the more determined it makes her to continue. When I got this news last year, I was shocked and horrified. She had announced during high school that she was “bi” then gay, then dated a very pretty girl for almost a year. My daughter was never a girly girly as a child and had a very awkward puberty when she gained weight and looked like a young man. When someone called her “sir” at a restaurant when she was 13 she cried about it for weeks. But she decided to do something about her weight, worked out, ate well, dropped 40 pounds, grew her hair out, and began wearing makeup, wanting to spend all her money at Sephora, Victoria’s Secret, etc. During senior year of high school, after announcing she was gay, she began dressing in more male type clothes, jeans and button downs. She became very depressed, often refused to go to school, began using pot, and barely graduated high school – this after being an honors student. I got her to a therapist for the depression during high school, and she also worked with a psychiatrist for anti depressants, with mixed results. She never conveyed to the therapists that she believed she was a male – after her announcement that she was male one year ago, I contacted these therapists from her high school years and in my tears and pain, conveyed what was happening. One of them expressed shock and said that this did appear to come out of the blue for what he knew; the other therapist said she “wasn’t surprised” and was proud of my daughter. I angrily told her that I knew my daughter better than she did, that my daughter had been suffering from horrible depression for the past 3 years and I believe had turned to this to try to make herself feel better and because of the network of people online and at her college that were blindly following this path. I found out who the “gender” doctor she was seeing at college was and finally managed to be able to attend a meeting with my daughter and the gender “doctor” at her school. Everyone at the college that she knew were now calling her “Paul”, and “he”. so during our meeting, the gender doctor expressed shock and empathy for “Paul” that her family was not understanding who she was. The doctor was entirely condescending to me and when I tried to advise her that my daughter Sarah (her real name) had suffered from serious depression for years, had become violent during her announcement and since then to her family, the gender “doctor” said that all of that depression and anger stemmed from Sarah having “gone through the wrong puberty” and that it was better for her to transition as soon as possible. I had similar reactions from all other therapists and psychiatrists who even spoke to me (after having to get a release from my daughter) – I needed for them to know, so desperately, that this was WRONG for my child, that my child was suffering and that beginning hormones and surgeries to mutilate her beautiful body was WRONG. I have found no one to support me in this and to keep the peace at home and to at least have some relationship with her, we began calling her Paul, using the “correct” pronouns; Sarah has an 8 year old sister and 17 year old brother who are both confused and sad about all of this, but put on a brave face and go along with it to avoid any further violent eruptions, swearing, threats when she is home. She had been back home for winter break now for almost a week; the first 2 nights, she again told me that it was my duty to pay for her surgeries, that I had paid for our son’s sinus surgery. At the advise of my own therapist, I have strategies for diffusing her to avoid any outbursts, but when she used profanity and became angry during this conversation, I told her finally that she would have to leave and return to her own apartment if she could not act civil and be kind to her family. Our extended family is very liberal and have been trying to accept this – we had Christmas dinner with them, including my 84 year old mother and everyone acted like nothing is out of the ordinary, used the new name, pronouns, etc. This was also true at our Thanksgiving. I have felt sick to my core through all of this; I have cried and screamed alone in desperation, begged to God to “please give me my little girl back”, “please help me”, to the point recently where I feel that God and everyone else has just abandoned me in this. My daughter’s appearance horrifies me and her anger and changed personality are as if she is a completely different person. She is entrenched only in her own needs, in her misery, in her anxiety; she is on several anxiety medications; she has no social life except for several other trans males, including her roommate. She is dating a girl who used to date a “cis” male until a year ago, the girl is very emotionally troubled and has a bad home life. My daughter, deep in there, is still the loving, funny and happy little girl I knew, but gradually this angry twisted version of her is taking over. I tried to intervene with all doctors to make sure they knew her mental health history, had her doctors here in our town contact the doctors at her college to tell them her history. But since she is 18, she was able to just walk into a “women’s clinic” in her college town and get a prescription and begin hormones. We have said we will not pay for any of this and to avoid the potentially violent response, had said we do not have that kind of money. That she was on her own for paying for this and that she needed to figure out how to do that if this is something she wants/needs. After failing out of college her first year, she had a decent semester this fall 2016, but announced the other night that she may quit college, work full time and get her surgeries as soon as possible because she is in physical pain, emotional pain. Everything she says sounds like it came off a website or a dictionary for transgender people. I am desperate and heartbroken and do not know what to do to stop this. My family and therapists say there is nothing I can do to stop it since she is over 18, other than not pay for it, but I’m screaming on the inside and so said that I can’t reach my daughter to express how wrong this is for her, that she has been “railroaded” and rubber stamped by supposed professionals who don’t even know her or her history. She seems to have rewritten her past and now told me that i “shoved her into dresses” her whole life. She never self identified as male and in fact chose only dresses and tights as a little girl, so it is obvious she is rewriting her life to make it fit with her story now. I am desperate for some advise on what to do at this point. I said my piece to her at the beginning of this a year ago, as did my husband, and a few other times, but because of the reaction of anger and venom, decided to go along with this to keep some relationship and keep working on trying to stop this. I have no effect and see that when she goes back to school, which is only an hour away, it is like “she” never even existed. I feel like my daughter is dead and has been replaced by this frequently awful person who everyone must tip toe around and appease. In my heart, I know that this has been caused by peers, doctors who just say, “ok, your a male” without even speaking with her or reviewing her mental health history. She is lost and confused – she is so crippled by anxiety that she is sick to her stomach – literally – almost daily and is on an anti nausea med prescribed by yet another doctor. I’ve told her that if this is really what she wants/needs, why is it causing this anxiety? Why can’t you leave your apartment or participate in life anymore if you are doing what you want to make your life happy? Please help with any advise – I feel responsible for this in a great part and want to know that I did something to stop this before it’s too late.
I know how you feel. My daughter is the same age as yours and I also found out about a year ago (one year ago the week of Thanksgiving) that she considers herself transgender. I can’t have actual conversations with her on this topic. I basically have to approach the topic via email. I’ve sent her numerous links to articles and videos on You Tube by Peachyoghurt which were suggested on here. I have no idea if any of it has sunk in but I at least feel I’m doing the best I can in the situation to educate her on the subject. It’s extremely difficult when they are adults to be able to do anything. Our hands are tied. I know there have been suggestions on here of withholding payment on college if they refuse to register as themselves and want to register as their male name. Sounds like that may not even be an option for you any way. Mine was already registered before I found all this out so that was a nonissue in my case. I also have 2 younger children (13 and 14) so I also know what that is like. My youngest kept asking me why does Sissy want to be a boy? She doesn’t even act like a boy. It’s really hard for the younger siblings to understand what is going on. Hell I’m the parent and I don’t even understand it!! All I do is take one day at a time. It’s the only way I can handle it. She wears a binder, dresses as a boy, has a boy haircut and doesn’t shave. I told her as long as she’s in college and living in my house there will be no testosterone or surgery. She has recently said she probably won’t take testosterone because she isn’t 100% sure about it. She also suffers from severe depression and anxiety like your daughter. She was also diagnosed with Aspergers earlier this year. Testosterone can actually make her depression and anxiety worse which I made sure I pointed out to her. There are numerous side affects that if I were you I’d make sure she is made aware of. If not by you, possibly someone she truly trusts. I refuse to use the pronoun he and the name she uses is “Mick” which I have used the nickname “Mik” for her since she was little. The pronunciation is the same but the spelling different so I do tend to use the name but in my mind it’s M I K. Our relationship has suffered because of me just not blindly accepting this self diagnosis via the internet. None of us saw this coming. It came out of the blue. I can’t just accept this. Like your daughter she tries to twist things she has said and done in the past to say see that shows that I am transgender. Outside of at the age of 10-11 she refused to wear dresses, which I myself did, there is nothing and as far as I’m concerned that proves nothing. It’s crazy how they try to reinvent their past! All I can say is take it one day at a time. Try to educate her on the subject via articles, etc. If possible, enlist the help of someone she trusts to help you do this. I wish you nothing but the best and I hope both of our daughters take a fork in the road away from this lifestyle.
I’ve been so thankful for all of your comments and have renewed strength to continue, but it has been like a nightmare that I can never wake from. Since my daughter is 19, I realize there is essentially nothing I can do, but seeing the physical changes happening due to the hormones, which she started 5 months ago, has knocked me down to a desperate place again. I tried to other day to just express my love and concern about this decision/path, asked whether she was receiving any other counseling other than that from the trans community; her therapist is a FTM trans in fact. Spoke with the therapist and separately with my daughter (in a public place in order to avoid a violent angry reaction) three days ago, but was again quietly called a bigot, “unread”, racist, and then lectured about the male brain, how she has that and her body just doesn’t match.She told me how any of her old friends that suggested such concern and worried about her mental health when making this sudden decision were no longer her friends, meaning I would be similarly dropped for this kind of comment. She said she would “love more than anything to be a women” rather than go down this path, since it was really hard and painful. She again had more “memories” of how she acted like and was identified as a boy when she was a child (all untrue), and when I said that I didn’t recall any of this, she said I was hurtful in trying to de-legitimize her. She is obviously very uncomfortable in her appearance now – has heavy facial hair – and looks like a girl with a beard. People are looking at her strangely and acting strange to her, she said, but she’s trying to ignore it. She went into a store in our home town and was “recognized” by a girl she knew well in high school, and she told me how awkward and horrible it was. I said, but I thought this is what you want? To change yourself.
I feel better that I again said my piece and that knowing her, it will register at some point, but maybe not. I feel she just may be too far gone and really brainwashed to change her mind until she goes through every possible procedure to “show me” and everyone else that she is right It is true that whenever I’ve expressed any concern or doubt, she becomes more dedicated to going to the next step, I think in part to show me and everyone else she is serious.
As another note, my daughter initially had a huge crush on a boy in high school; when he did not want to continue their relationship, which never grew beyond flirting, she said she was “bi”. She then said no, I’m really, really gay, and began dating a girl. They dated for a year, and then the girl broke up with my daughter the day before senior prom My daughter was devastated and depressed over this breakup, and several months later, announced on winter break from college that she is now a “male” who apparently is bi sexual (bi sexual revelation came out last week).
The FTM therapist she is seeing told me over the phone the other day, after my conversation with my daughter about my concerns, that it sounded like i am no longer “supportive” of my kid since I am now questioning her “gender identity” and expressing that she should weigh all options and not just go down one path that everyone else she knows is condoning, even encouraging, without even knowing her or her past issues. The therapist knew nothing of her violent incidents, anxiety, since my daughter never told him or else told the therapist they occurred before transitioning begun. No, I told the therapist, all of the anger and violence and disrespect began AFTER transitioning began. I have been paying for this therapist, who is at my daughter’s college town, but now think I will no longer do this. I suggested to my daugther that she begin to contribute toward her expenses for therapy since she has chosen a therapist not on our insurance network and she said this therapist was the “only thing keeping me alive”. I did challenge her on the constant playing of the suicide card and said that if she is truly feeling suicidal, please let’s get her to a hospital for care immediately. She said she is not and didn’t need to go to the hospital but my priorities obviously did not include her. Ironic, since all time, energy, and money have gone to support her at college and in therapy for years, to the detriment of the rest of the family.
My heart just hurts. I am not going to attempt another conversation on this since it seems to push her further in the other direction. But do not think I will be able to witness any further transition and may have to stay away from her to protect myself and the rest of the family if necessary.
Thanks for all of your support.
What I really don ‘t understand about these therapists is why push these kids in the direction of transitioning if they know the family isn’t supportive? It makes absolutely no sense! They have to know it’s going to be even more detrimental to them to transition and not have family support than take an alternative route. If someone had told me there would come a time in my life when I wouldn’t totally support my daughter I would have called them a liar. It’s hard to be supportive of something that comes out of the blue and the pieces just don’t fit together properly. I guarantee you the therapist who told you you aren’t being supportive has never been through this with their own child. Until someone actually walks this walk, they will never understand it. I would no longer pay for this therapist. If your daughter wants to see her let her pay for it. The therapist is being totally disrespectful to you for not even trying to understand what you’re feelings are. I understand you aren’t her patient but you are the one paying the bills and she needs to respect your feelings and opinions. I had a problem with a therapist from PERSAD. To the best of my my knowledge my daughter isn’t seeing her anymore. It ended after the first meeting I had with her and my daughter together. I told my daughter I didn’t like her and felt she was trying to push her to transition. I also told the therapist that. She insisted she wasn’t and said they have these steps they go through to see if a person is ready to transition or not. Well if that isn’t pushing her toward transitioning what is? The only good that came out of that was that she did tell my daughter the side affects of testosterone and told her not to do it unless she was 100% positive. I have to say that was a surprise when my daughter told me that. I’m sorry your daughter has gone down that road. Mine has expressed not doing so, at least as of now, because she isn’t 100% sure. I would probably react the same way you are if she took it and grew facial hair. It still makes be somewhat nauseous some days to look at her wearing a binder so I know it would be worse if she took it to the next step. Don’t feel bad for feeling the way you do. This is not an easy issue to deal with. Try to take one day at a time. I know that’s the only way I am able to deal with it.
Rewriting the past in their heads is quite common in kids who identify as trans. Jessie once told me she had never worn pink or ‘girly’ clothes and was quite surprised when I showed her photos of her younger self in the odd pink sparkly top that she had chosen herself. Your daughter’s therapist sounds toxic, I am so sorry. I know how painful it is to hear someone misgender your child – in the true sense of the word! I’m not sure what you can do as your child is technically an adult, except continue to refuse to pay for the surgery, try to coax her to talk to you and keep telling her you love her. I heard a wonderful comment the other day: I’m not sure if it was on this website or elsewhere, but it was something along the lines of ‘we all need to learn to drive the body we have’. That is so true. Is your daughter open to discussion with you? Will she read articles you send her or discuss gender theory with you?
Thank you for your comments again. She won’t talk with me about any of this, other than to talk about her physical symptoms from anxiety,depression, etc.. If I try to discuss anything substantive, she becomes angry, defensive and corrects my language and calls me bad names, transphobe, you name it. ; the “coming out” was just when she came home from college last winter break and told us this very angrily, said we had to pay for all surgeries, etc. This is how it has been since; I definitely now will broach gender theory and let her know I have found some good articles that I will share, now that I have the support of this website and your resources to articulate how I’ve felt the past year.
It has been difficult for me and my husband to talk to her because she gets so angry and verbally abusive and both sides end up angry; my husband and I are at the point of just not wanting to be around her anymore – not because of the trans issue but because of how mean and verbally abusive she is to me and even her siblings when she is home.
I will try and at least keep presenting this – she is very smart and may eventually read what I send, if only to initially just use it to call me stupid. It may sink in with time though.
Testosterone can reportedly cause some pretty large personality effects — anger is often reported, hypersexuality ditto, though it’s all anecdotal info. Pretty common, though, apparently. This may/may not be having some amplifying effect on your kid’s emotional state at the moment.
You are right in probing with her the question of why she still feels so crappy if she is currently getting the right treatment. But there’s likely a limit to what you can do, because she might not be able to process much that you say, right now. Nevertheless, don’t discount the effect your cautionary attitude is having with her. Under all that confusion, as long as she knows you love her — love is not negligible, and she likely knows it’s not, no matter how she is expressing herself with you at the moment.
Sustaining that level of anger takes a LOT of energy. Someone here told me this, during a time when my kid was explosively angry with me due to my “unsupportive” stance, and it turned out to be true. After a couple months of noncommunication and hostility and “don’t touch me,” kid got back to more like the usual self. I am not saying she’s at the place where we are having deep conversations about gender and transition, but at least she better understands why spouse and I are not enthusiastic about transition as a dysphoria solution, and why our attitude is based on some kind of reasonable risk assessment.
Maybe when your kid gets back to school, just email her a few links? She can take or leave those, respond or not, but at least you can offer some resources — about biology, about gender, about patriarchy and adaptive reactions to that.
In the end none of us can keep our kids from making choices we view as self-destructive. And you have to cut yourself some slack — there is a whole industry and social movement around this now, and you are one voice (or one of a few) among all the voices, most of which are telling your kid that you are bigoted and “phobic.” Nevertheless … she knows, deep down, from all your years of interaction that you are loving. She knows, deep down, that no one else is going to have her back to the degree that you will. That cognitive dissonance — between this deep knowledge and her gender dysphoria and all those other voices who are telling her you’re evil — is likely the source of some of her current distress.
Our kids are individuals and they will ultimately make individual choices; they’re not our puppets, and eventually we have to stop blaming ourselves for the adult choices they make. We are obligated to support them, but we’re not obligated to support all their life choices.
Life is long, if we are lucky. Take a breath, do something good for yourself, remind yourself that you are a full individual too, not only your child’s mother. Keep praying if that is helpful to you; keep finding a way to find some good thing in each day. Keep loving your kid. Keep scraping up some faith in the future, no matter how bleak it seems right now. Today is not forever.
Know that you’re not alone.
Thank you. You have no idea how much your comments and everyone else’s are helping me. My youngest child, who is a 7 year old girl, was crying hysterically last night about missing her sister and I had to dig deep to even find anything left to comfort her with or just to deal with it. Our middle child, a 16 year old son, has just isolated himself from oldest and while he is cordial, at my request, to her, will not talk or interact with her, which causes her to be angry and label him a transphobe too. In any event, you are right that we all need to remember that we are also people with needs and I will do something nice for myself. In my family at the moment, I am this seemingly strong person that everyone is either coming to complain about me or some other person or situation and to “fix it”, or to be angry and sometimes abusive verbally, I have been able to withstand it, stay strong and be non-reactive until recently (advice from my own therapist), but now I feel that strength just crumbling further on a daily basis and don’t have much left. It breaks my heart that I want her just to go back to school so I don’t have to face this as personally, but miss her the way she used to be so much that I dont’ want her to go either. Once she is back, I am going to communicate via links about gender, patriarchy, etc. and just lay the seeds. Trying to speak with my daughter about any of this has always resulted in her utlimately saying that she will “probably not be here much longer” if she doesn’t get surgical help and that will be my fault. So for the sake of the other kids, am avoiding any discussions here at the home.
Again,reading all of your responses has moved me to tears each time, realizing that I am not alone and finally having some others to talk to who are going through this. Thank you so much. I will I had something more, some knowledge, some advice of my own to contribute, rather than just writing about my own desperation and sadness right now.
It’s difficult to talk to them about it. They don’t want to hear it. My child doesn’t scream at me but rolls her eyes and gets frustrated with me. That’s why I turned to email. She told me she reads them. If that is true or not I don’t really know but I hope she does. She’s very intelligent so I’d like to think if she is reading what I send her she is evaluating the information. I feel for you. I don’t know what I would do if she were screaming at me. I guess I would probably remind her that I am her Mother and as such deserve the respect of that position and if that didn’t work more than likely would end up in a fight with her. Ask her is she can see what her anger has done to her relationships within her family. That is a totally separate issue from being transgender so try to separate the two. Let her know that yelling and screaming is NOT going to get her what she wants in no way, shape or form. Definitely don’t allow her to guilt you. I know that is easier said than done because I feel it myself. Hang in there. I know it isn’t easy but here you are supported by people who are experiencing a lot of the same things you are. It definitely is nice to know you aren’t the only one going through it.
If she keeps saying she ‘will probably not be here much longer’ if you don’t pay for physical transition treatments, I’d call her on that. Bluntly say that people who are suicidal need psych attention right away, and offer to go with her to the ER. I’d definitely press her on that and see if the response seems to indicate actual suicidal ideation/intentions or if it’s simply something that’s the result of the constant “transition or die” drumbeat the kid has been exposed to.
Tell her you don’t mess around with suicide talk and that nobody should mess around with that. See what the response is like. I’ve been to the ER with my kid and others here have, too. For some the ideation was the real deal; for others it was pretty clearly a manipulative tool. For some it’s been both with the same kid at different times. (But I have to tell you that one thing I’ve learned about my own kid is that she has an amazing instinct for staying alive. That’s not every kid, but it’s shaped my dealings with mine through this whole scenario. If your own kid is truly depressed, that could be another situation entirely.)
HI SadConfusedMom (this won’t nest correctly but…) – please while you are on this website, read the post that’s captioned “Suicidality” (it’s about the third or fourth one down on the right-hand side). There is a lot of really helpful links and information there for you.
It’s impossible to know exactly what to do about a child’s suicide threats. I have dealt with this several times in my family (although not with the daughter who brought me here). I will share with you one piece of knowledge about it, though, which I learned in a different support group and which has served me well.
If your daughter does threaten suicide and you believe it to be more than a passing statement, what most professionals in the field suggest is that you simply inform her that you are calling 911, and THEN DO IT. If your daughter needs to be in care, she will be in care (a safe place). If she does not need to be in care, she will understand that she is no longer getting a reaction out of you, or getting you to do what she wants via threats. This is the case whether she is with you, or back at school. In fact, the next time she mentions suicide to you, you might want to tell her that if she has genuinely suicidal thoughts, then care is by far the best place for her to be. (This is also why it’s helpful to know a bit about suicidality in the first place… it’s usually not at all related to the actions that other people take or don’t take.)
The thing is, very unfortunately, suicide and threats and attempts are all an integral part of the “trans playbook.” Not to say that a lot of trans people don’t commit suicide, or try, and we could talk all day about why that might be. But, of course when you are dealing with it in your own home, it is incredibly scary and upsetting. This is why the “call 911” approach works so well, it makes sure your daughter is safe, but at the same time removes a lot of the drama from the situation.
I know it’s hard…
I agree with past post. It’s the only thing that helped us was to call her bluff on suicide and admit her to hospital. I wish you could get her away from the school and people she’s surrounded herself around. She needs to be indulged back into family…. another thing that has helped us.
This is going to sound insensitive and I don’t even know if I could do this, but you raised your eldest to adulthood and now you have to do everything that you can to make the home safe and non toxic for the younger children. Even if it’s reduced contact. I was the oldest of eight, and when I was a young adult I had a pretty serious alcohol and drug problem. I wasn’t allowed to go home because I was toxic. I hated them for it then, but I get it now. And I’m glad my younger siblings didn’t have to suffer my drama too much.
I’m specifically referring to the violence and outbursts in the house, not so much the gender identity. I was always told by my parents that they love me but they couldn’t have me around. I had a lot of anger at the time. They did visit me but I didn’t get any financial help or anything else. I strongly believe that I’m better for it, and that if my self destruction had been supported I wouldn’t be here now. Different issue, but the effect on the home is similar.
(((SadConfusedMom))) I can hear so much hurt and pain and confusion coming through your message and my heart goes out to you! I am so so sorry that you had to have your second “Christmas Horribilius” – know that there are plenty of us parents in the same boat as you, who are feeling just as terrible and just as lost.
My best suggestion for you right now is just to do some reading, for yourself, about the social pressures on our beautiful (mostly lesbian) daughters. Even though it doesn’t look like it, they are often responding in what is, for them, a rational way, to the homophobia and general misogyny of our culture. Here, we do not believe that the way to overcome these enemies is to, in effect, join them… but this is a very strong message they are getting. Lesbian bad and shameful? Women weak and value-less? Come to the dark side, we have cookies.
Also know – and repeat to yourself as often as necessary – this is NOT YOUR FAULT. You did the best you could given what you knew at the time. You love your daughter and this is why you want the best for her – there is literally nobody else on this earth, except your husband, who has as much skin in this game as you do. Don’t feel guilty that you don’t want this for your daughter, but also don’t feel like you caused it to happen. If she had been taken up by a cult, or some bizarre religious fixation, or some fringe political group – you’d focus on how to get her out of it, not on beating yourself up and what you did to “cause” it because you didn’t.
This is a great community and has some extremely smart and perceptive people in it (many of whom are also very liberal politically…) And, we are here for each other. It is our little corner of the internet where we can talk and discuss and examine this stuff critically, when it feels like the whole world around us has gone crazy. Welcome…
Thank you both for your comments.It felt like someone was finally in my corner last night on Christmas when I found this website; I have found nothing else for the past year but websites supporting parents who are all “going with the program” and seemingly accepting everything without question. So it feels really good to have found others who are going through this and feeling the same. I will look at the links and try to share with her, but she is so militant about this and so angry, I’ve been afraid to even try any more. When I have said we are not paying for hormones or surgeries, she always says that if she doesn’t get this all done soon, she will be “gone” and if she had cancer, wouldn’t I pay for her treatment? “Its the same thing”. again, thank you for your support and I will be a daily visitor of your resources.
SadConfusedMom there are many many other mothers out there feeling like you do. You are not to blame – just as if your daughter suffered from anorexia or another long term illness, these things happen. It is just that your daughter is the victim – being pescribed hormones and potentially surgery for a psychiatric disorder.
In the end there may not be much you can do beyond what you already have, and just to maintain what relationship you can and be there for her when she needs you. I have found it very helpful to see a psychologist – what you are going through is la form of grief. I liken it to my daughter having been taken hostage – I don’t know when she will be released or what state she will be in. And remember the reason this is so distressing is because you care so much.
This is such fantastic advice. More proof that connecting with other trans-critical parents is incredibly valuable and necessary. It’s a strange time in our history when it comes to mental health treatment for these kiddos.
Reblogged this on Violet Dust.
I wanted to thank many of you for the article and the responses here. I, too, am dealing with a daughter who has told me she is transgender. She is now 18 years old, and will be 19 in a few days. I have been dealing with this for around three years. I am starting to find other parents like me who are questioning this, including those on this blog. The mainstream media sure wants to make parents who question this the bad guy, don’t they?
My daughter has asked me to use male pronouns and use her “masculine” name, although the name she has chosen is actually ambiguous. I have fought it for a long time. I kept thinking she would change her mind, but she hasn’t. What doesn’t help is that she has found an ally in my sister, and my sister keeps calling me out to be supportive. The most recent event of this was Christmas Eve. We had been to my husband’s grandmother’s house to celebrate, and all day everyone called her by her given name. Things seemed to be going well. When we got home, she messaged my sister to “vent.” This led to a message from my sister that I needed to get it together or I would lose my daughter one way or another, and I only would have myself to blame.
I was upset, and talked to my daughter about it. I agreed to call her by the masculine name, but as I continued to think about it even more, I became more and more angry. I finally recognized the emotional manipulation going on. I cried myself to sleep that night.
I have had “suicide” held over me for years as a manipulation tool. “If you take away the Internet, I won’t have any friends to talk to, and I will just kill myself.” This is one example of many that she has said. I made sure she was in therapy, and I reported her threats to the school counselor. I don’t know that the pediatric therapists were too helpful, but we have tried many drug combinations to deal with depression and anxiety. As she got older, she found another therapist to try, and I know that one supported her transgender belief. This one also suggested a autism spectrum diagnosis. I could see that. She has been a gifted, quirky child, but she struggles with reading people and “gray” areas in life. She is more literal and black and white, if that makes sense. But this suggestion came when she was 18. Perhaps I should have questioned it sooner, because I am now seeing the connection of not fitting in well, and transgender communities accepting her, as long as she doesn’t question her transgender beliefs for herself. She doesn’t have that many in real life friends, anymore. I think most were tired of her drama.
Through all of this, I have refused to fund hormones or surgeries of any kind. I will not support a legal name change. I have told her that she will have to fund these herself if she really wants them. I do continue to pay for healthcare and medicine, including therapy. She currently is not in school. I didn’t push it because she doesn’t seem to be in a mental state to be successful. She has held one job after high school graduation, but it was only for three weeks. She was let go for too many absences because of “anxiety.” I continue to allow her to live at home, and I buy her necessities. She has a long-term boyfriend who is not transgender. She says they are a gay couple, and they attend gay pride events in town.
Just typing all of this out is helpful, It’s been a rough few years. She learns just what to say to manipulate me, and I don’t want to allow this anymore. I have been too “understanding” and lenient with her. I understand now that I am only responsible for my actions. I can’t live my life with the fear of what she may or may not do as a result of my actions. I also have another daughter who is seven. I pray that I am not messing up everything for her. I will continue to read up on this topic, especially this board. Thanks for being there!
Philesha, I want you to repeat after me: I am not responsible for someone else’s suicidal ideation.
In other words, suicide is a choice that someone has to make for themselves. No one can force them to do it. Now, people can be more susceptible to suicidal ideation if they have a mental illness such as depression, but how exactly is that your fault? Do you think you are a bad parent, or do you think you are in the right? Is it really YOU driving your child to suicide or is that a choice she is deciding to make as a grown adult just because things aren’t going her way? While suicidal threats should always be taken seriously, you must not allow her to manipulate you. There are ways to address her threats without giving into her.
For one, if you really care about your child and love her more than anything, which I’m sure you do, you need to tell your sister to f**** off and mind her own goddam business. It is none of her business how you parent your child. If you’ve already done this, great!
Secondly, you need to put your foot down. If she wants to continue living under your roof (your post gives me the impression that she is already a legal adult), she needs to go by YOUR rules. You tell her you will not be addressing her by her new name, nor will you be using any new pronouns.
Thirdly, you tell her that if she is truly suicidal, she needs to go to a therapist of your choosing if she wants to continue living with you. Find a gender critical therapist if you can. There was one commenting in the comments here and she said she is available via Skype. You may want to email her and try to work something out.
Also, if you are paying her phone bill, you need to threaten to take that phone away unless she stops talking to her aunt. If she gets mad about it, tell her she can get a job and pay her own bills.
Basically, you can’t keep making this easy for her by giving into her demands. Manipulators use suicide to get their way and in my opinion this is what seems to be going on here. Given the extremely high prevalence of narcissism displayed by people in the trans community, I think you need to assume that’s what this is. I’m not saying your daughter is necessarily an NPD or some other anti social personality disorder, BUT I do know that all teenagers and people in their early 20s are extremely self centered. Because we’ve all been a self centered teenager. I look back on myself and really wonder how I could have been so sailfish in that past and I’m sure most people can relate. The major issue is that our society breeds this narcissism in people now because due to advancements in technology nearly everything is instant gratification.
Some of the stuff I’m suggesting might seem extreme, but the fact remains so is gender ideology. It’s an extremely woman-hating ideology and I’m amazed if even her boyfriend isn’t challenging her on it? Have you had a conversation with him about it? This might be a helpful avenue, you never know. He might be just as scared as you are and doesn’t know what else to do except go along with it. I’m not saying you should meddle in their relationship, but you never know, you could be able to form some kind of coalition with him to address this issue. If she has more than one person challenging her on it, then you start to look less and less crazy.
Lastly, you might want to try to influence your sister if you can. She might be the key to getting your daughter to listen since your daughter clearly cares about her opinion.
I want you to remember the most important thing: whatever you do, if something bad happens, it is NOT your fault. You’re doing the best you can to cope with a very confusing situation. You do what you think is right. You don’t have to take my word for it, but I highly recommend you study up on narcissism if you haven’t already. A lot of times narcissism is misdiagnosed as autism, or a person can have both conditions. But you might find some of that info helpful in dealing with the manipulation. There are also different types of narcissism and it tends to manifest differently in females compared to males. Anyway, I hope you find the answer and I’m so sorry you’re going through this. Just know you aren’t alone. I really think the ideology is going to backfire on itself and the emperor will reveal he has no clothes. I just hope it happens before your daughter does something permanently damaging.
Thanks for the comments. I am certainly thinking about all you have to say. It has been helpful to know that I am not alone, though I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. It is liberating for me to move beyond some of the manipulation tactics, since now I see them for what they are. I don’t have as much fear. Thanks again for the comments. They are truly helpful.
It may be helpful if your daughter can get a diagnosis for autism, if she indeed has that. Then she may be able to get therapy to help her to think more flexibly, and help her manage her anxiety. It will also mean that anyone offering her gender reassignment should take that into consideration – there is a disproportionately high number of girls and women having difficulty with their gender identity. The key for us (our daughter is 18) is slowing everything down – in the hope that some more emotional maturity and effective therapy for anxiety will enable her to actually find out how she can best live her life, before any irreversible medical treatments. There is actually no point arguing with our daughter – we are remaining steadfastly neutral on the outside (but just as concerned and terrified on the inside, although I have at least stopped crying myself to sleep at night).
My daughter is 13. She has just informed me that she is trans and wants me to call her Lucas. I don’t know what to make of it. She had previously come out as bisexual (or pansexual to use her term) and I was fine with that. I don’t care who she loves. But she also spent 30 minutes on her make up before we went to dinner that night and was shopping for dresses 2 weeks before. I don’t care if she doesn’t fit stereotypes but I was feeling at a REALLY HUGE loss when I started searching for support in NOT feeding into this. Your website was a light in a very dark tunnel for me. Thank you!
Hi Brenda. My daughter came out at 13, too. And like your daughter, exhibited behaviors that didn’t make sense (wearing tight dresses, occasional make-up, etc.). I desisted for a full year ->she grew to hate me and it was horrible. Suicidal ideation, the whole bit. All of the specialists said we had to affirm her gender. So we did. And now she is playing the part of a boy, looks like a boy, but still doesn’t act like one. (You can read more of my story below…)
It is such a good thing that you find this site so soon. I got swept up in all of the madness and consulted with SO many experts, SO many other trans-parents who had me doubting myself constantly and made me fear that I was to blame for my child’s issues. I’ve been in a constant state of anxiety for the past two years. But at least now — for the first time — I have hope.
I wish you the best as you navigate this. You are not alone!
I must admit I’m very pleased at MOST of how our conversation went with her last week. Her dad and I are divorced (since she was 3) and my husband and I sat down with her dad and with her. Sadly, her dad only knew what was going on because I told him.
I don’t agree with some of her dad’s responses and I hate that she saw a side of him I had hoped she never would. He has threatened to pull her out of her school if she doesn’t cut off her friends, out her friends to their parents, etc.
I made it clear that I wouldn’t pull her out of her school (nor would I allow him to) nor would I allow anyone to out someone else to their families given that we have no way to know if it would be safe or not. That said, we did set some limits that are going to apply in both houses:
1. She is Taylor. She is not Lucas. She is a girl. She is not a boy. By all means, cut your hair how you want. Wear whatever clothes you want. We embrace and accept individuality.
2. There will be no hormones. No binding (for health reasons as much as anything – she has a heart condition and the strain that could put on her lungs could also impact her heart). There will be no “gender therapy” or surgeries.
3. No more social media. Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, etc are all removed from her phone.
4. Get involved in activities again.
5. Use of her technology is exclusively with supervision.
6. Take time to see what is coming from inside herself and what is coming from outside influences.
I reiterated that it is ok for her to be straight or lesbian or bisexual. It is ok for her not to fit stereotypes. Despite what the “trans community” is pushing on these easily influenced kids, you don’t have to be in the “wrong body” just because you don’t fit the mold someone is trying to place you in.
I expected a lot more resistance. And at first there was some. But she told me a little while later that she knows that her stepdad and I are coming from a place of love and concern for her best interests. In the days since, she’s been pretty amazing honestly. She’s actively participating in family activities. She’s pleasant. Heck, she’s even told her friends (voluntarily) to call her Taylor again.
I’m actually feeling hopeful.
Congratulations, Brenda. You were very smart to proceed as you did and stay away from the gender specialists. That was my biggest mistake. I hope you have continued to success. My life feels like a nightmare right now; it is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone to experience.
I just discovered this site a few days ago, and can’t stop reading…as well as the other helpful sites that have been linked to. First, I have to thank you for starting 4thwave. This is truly life-saving work that you are doing. I only wish I had found this when my daughter came out to me two years ago at the age of 13 1/2.
Lilly and Jessie — thank you so much for this post. And thank you all for taking the time to share your perspectives. It has been so helpful to read the personal stories and intelligent insights from everyone. For those of you with adult children, my heart breaks for you, but thank you for your bravery in sharing your stories, which are so helpful to those of us who have a little more time left before that dreaded 18th birthday.
For one full year after my daughter came out, I questioned and resisted. Nothing made sense. Like so many others, this came out of no where. I reasoned that it was a product of an Aspergerish-thinking style, not fitting in socially, not fitting in with stereotypical girl behavior, attending a small progressive school where many kids are open and affirmed in their declarations of gender differences, as well as depression and anxiety. What happened was that my disbelief resulted in a deterioration of our previously strong loving relationship, with threats to leave home and talks of suicidal ideation. The depression and anxiety worsened, despite constant therapy. After screaming to me in anger, “You don’t accept me because you don’t accept my gender,” I knew I had to do something. So we started working with a gender specialist.
We were urged to support her by using her preferred name and pronouns. We were encouraged to purchase a binder. She came out at school. During this process, there were times when I thought that maybe my doubts were just products of wishful thinking…maybe everyone else is right….that I just need to accept this and push through my grief and face reality. attended TG support groups, where I felt like the oddball in the room. Rather than feeling supported and validated, I felt increasingly isolated in my thoughts and fears.
As the year progressed, the inconsistencies I witnessed made no sense to me. I simply could not see my daughter as a male. Although she looked like one in her appearance, there was not — and never had been — anything masculine about her at all. She was not even a lesbian, as she had always, and still is, attracted to boys. My original theory, about this being a combination of Aspergerish thinking, social conditioning, and an identity crisis seemed clearer to me; her official diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder was the last straw that has led me to conclude that I am now 99.9% certain she is still my daughter, and not the son that she is trying to convince me that she is.
As with many of you, I am liberal-minded and progressive on most issues. But I am also a critical thinker and natural-born skeptic. What has clouded my vision this past year was the fear for my daughter’s mental health and the fact that EVERY SINGLE “EXPERT” that I consulted has convinced me that I was doing harm to my daughter by my lack of support. I am angry with myself for not seeing this as quickly many of you did.
After reading all of this, I have a strange mixture of hopefulness that I can get my daughter back and fear, that if I don’t do and say the right thing, I will lose her to hormones and surgery. While my husband and I will not support this, she is already saving her money and has a plan in place.
As I read about everyone’s experiences, there seem to be some common threads of advice about not supporting the gender assertions by using names and pronouns; of not allowing binders; of cutting out social media; of communicating disbelief; of sharing articles that deconstruct transgender theory…and so forth.
While I agree with this approach in one sense, I fear the unintended consequences.
Right now, my relationship with my daughter is stronger than it has been in years. I am so scared that if I say or share anything that she views as an attack on her identity, that this will have the opposite effect on her. While she is seeing a weekly therapist who is on the same page as I am — we fired all the gender specialists! — and medication has helped with depression, I fear she is still in a fragile state. She feels very affirmed by her new TG status and wears it proudly. She seems to enjoy her social status at school — there is finally a “group” to which she belongs. So to question any of this might backfire on us.
Instead, I am wondering if there are any indirect ways that I can start planting seeds of doubt. But would this even be enough to counteract the stronger affirming messages that she is receiving from everyone else in her life? I am trying to find compelling literature stating how girls on the spectrum often present as gender non-conforming as well as non-offensive writing that breakdown the transgender ideology. I feel that anything that is too harshly stated would cause a lot of defensiveness. Beyond the links that have already been mentioned, does anyone else have any suggestions? Jessie, do you have any specific guidance for me. This is especially tricky given my daughter’s rigid thinking and the difficulties we had for the year after her announcement. I am nervous of saying or doing nothing; I am nervous of saying or doing the wrong thing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
You know your child better than anyone, so I’m not going to pretend to know what is best for her and your family. I certainly can understand the stubbornness that goes along with the trans self-diagnosis. It’s pretty typical teen stuff for our kids to think they have all the answers and that we parents know nothing and don’t understand them.
My suggestion is to find ways to let her know that she can back off of this self-diagnosis at any time and you’ll be there for her. That it is okay if she doesn’t want to define herself or if she changes her mind, or even if she fluctuates. Encourage her to hold off on making decisions that can’t be undone until she’s in her 20s, when brain development is complete. She has time–there is no rush to put herself into one box or the other.
If you feel there is an opportunity to do so, maybe tell her about some of the detransitioned women who are starting to speak out and share their experiences. There are some women out there who thought that transition was the only way to survive, but have since found ways to manage their dysphoria without the hormones and surgeries.
Thank for your response. That is a good idea to make sure that she knows she can change her mind — so if she does have any bit of doubt, she knows there is a way out. It is so hard when everything in society tells her otherwise. I have been looking for a good Asperger/ASD book to give her as she is very open to reading more about her ASD diagnosis. My biggest hope is that the book might make reference to ASD girls not fitting the feminine mold as a way to show her indirectly that this is what is going on — not that she is trans. And yet I fear she would interpret that message as more of a confirmation of her TG self-diagnosis. Some books make mention of the male-brain hypothesis. One book (by Hendrickx) referenced Wenn Lawson mentioning that sometimes when ASD kids transition, they even lose some of their ASD characteristics that they no longer meet the diagnostic criteria! (How I hope she never reads that book!)
If anyone knows of any books — preferably one that describes the unique presentation of Aspergers in girls (I know the term is no longer official, but I feel that it is a better descriptor than high functioning ASD!) and has a good chapter on the unique presentation of gender (without suggesting TG), I would be greatly appreciative. I think I have read through every single one on Amazon and can’t come up with much.
Alternatively, if there are any “authoritative-type” blogs that I could reference, I think that would also be helpful. I fear that if I present her with something that looks more like lay opinion, she will easily dismiss it.
I really appreciate any and all responses!!
Have you tried “Nerdy, shy and socially inappropriate”, the author blogs under Musings of an Aspie. First name Cynthia, sorry can’t recall her surname. She has a good take on her own atypical gender presentation, and is definitely not pro trans! Tony Atwood’s book on Asbergers Syndrome is a good read anyway, and he briefly covers gender difficulties. He also states that in his experience assuming you are the other gender because you don’t fit in with your same sex peers can last up to a couple of years.
I am trying to get my daughter to read up on Asbergers too, but at present she isn’t interested in anything that relates to being a woman, so I am not pushing it.
I too have come across that suggestion that transitioning can ‘cure’ autism – incredibly irresponsible.
Read some of these. Maybe you can use one or more of them.
http://theprisma.co.uk/2016/03/06/autism-aspergers-and-gender-identity/
http://www.aacc.net/2014/04/03/teens-on-the-spectrum-whats-it-like-to-be-a-girl-with-aspergersasd/
My daughter also has aspergers and considers herself transgender. If I can find any other articles I’ve read I’ll forward them to you.
Hi, FightingToGetHerBack,
One very un-feminine Autistic woman, Temple Grandin, has written several books – and there was a great movie about her that came out not too long ago.
Wishing you & your daughter the best.
Thanks for the recommendations everyone. JC, I checked out Musings of an Aspie. It’s a great website, but I am looking for something authoritative rather than personal anecdotes. I think my daughter will be less dismissive. Rette, thanks for the links. I have read Attwood’s stuff, but didn’t know his theory on gender. Interesting that he doesn’t put that anywhere on his website. I also think the story from the therapist with a daughter is good to share. Trish, yes, my daughter saw the Temple Grandin movie before the ASD diagnosis, but I am unfamiliar with her views on the gender piece. My daughter is very interested in animals, so if Grandin has any writings about this, I think she would find it very persuasive. (I read her one of her books, but didn’t see anything). If you have any links, please send. That would be so helpful.
Thank you all so much for taking the time to respond!!
FightingToGetHerBack,
Your experience is so familiar. Glad you have found this place of understanding and support.
I just came across this from autism specialist Tony Attwood, a Foreword he wrote to ‘Safety Skills For Aspergers Women: How to Save a Perfectly Good Female Life’ by Lianne Holliday Willey. Have you seen the book itself? I have not.
http://tonyattwood.com.au/about-aspergers/girls-and-women-who-have-aspergers
He writes about how girls with Aspergers realise that they are different from other girls, how they may ‘become someone else’ and ‘may identify with a fictional character’, and dares to brush up against the subject of the vulnerability of Aspergers girls to developing gender confusion:
“Being a ‘Tom Boy’ in childhood, not being interested in fashion and femininity, make up and perfumes, as well as appreciating the logic of the male brain can lead to concerns regarding sexuality and gender identity. Social immaturity and naivety can also lead to vulnerability to sexual predators and a risk of sexual assault.”
I don’t know his writing, maybe you do? Does he write more about identity elsewhere, I wonder?
Maybe parents/friends/relatives/GC therapists of young Aspergers women who are disturbed at the increasing numbers of ASD girls drawn to harming themselves with testosterone and surgery could approach him and ASK that he write about it? There is an email contact on the link.
Also, you may already be aware but just to point out that Wenn Lawson was Wendy Lawson, appears to have quite recently adopted a transman identity and changed her body and voice with testosterone. Not exactly an unbiased source about the subject. What you mention from the Hendrickx book is shockingly irresponsible.
Thanks, Endtheharms. Yes, I have read about the Wiley book on Tony Attwood’s website. It’s hard to find writing about the gender confusion bit in ASD that my daughter would not find offensive. That is a good idea to write to Tony himself. I have read bits and pieces from him that are suggestive that girls on the spectrum may mistakenly view themselves as trans, but wish he elaborated more on this — and wrote in a way that was accessible to the girls themselves. When I read things about it myself, it sounds so convincing and obvious. But when I read from the perspective of my daughter — who thinks she has found her “tribe” and has received nothing but positive feedback about being trans — I think whatever literature I give her on this has to be written in a very careful way. I will keep looking myself and post back if I find anything helpful….
It seems that the link between ASD and gender identity is fairly recent in terms of academic research, so there is not actually a lot of data into long term outcomes. This paper for example, is a review of current research, concluding that much more research needs to be done. http://www.smr.jsexmed.org/article/S2050-0521(15)00004-9/pdf
Thank you for sharing, Judy. What is frustrating about all of these scholarly articles on ASD and gender is they seem to be more concerned with under-treatment than over-treatment. How I wish they would instead focus on the importance of slowing down and questioning the whole transition process…and offer some real tangible advice, even if it is not “scientifically” proven on what we can do in the meantime. It seems that researchers are missing an important area that is of serious concern for many of us and we are all left to flounder around on the Internet trying to figure it out together. Thank God for sites like this. We don’t have time for the “experts” to figure it out!
Hi. I have no children and I just came here following radical feminist page links. I was struck by the reference to autism and asperger. Not many people know the relationship between autism spectrum and celiac or gluten sensitivity. It occurs to me that maybe a gluten-free diet will help some of you. I’m not an expert but I could not stop commenting, if it helps anyone. My best wishes to all.
Sorry but that supposed link between autism and gluten insensitivity/celiac has been debunked.
Here’s a link to Web MD’s report on the largest study performed to determine if there was a connection:
http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20130925/study-finds-no-connection-between-autism-celiac-disease#1
It has been suggested by one reader that it is irresponsible not to refer a trans-questioning child to the UK NHS and GIRES.
The NHS pages on gender feature a lengthy article by a child who believes she is a boy, but they do not feature a single interview with a child who desisted. They feature several interviews with the parents of children who have transitioned socially, but none with the parents of children who have not. They do not even mention the idea of detransition. They do not try to explain that it is fairly normal to feel uncomfortable conforming to the gender stereotypes that your culture expects of your sex. The NHS website tells us that biological sex is ‘assigned at birth’ and that gender dysphoria is not a mental illness.
I can only speak for myself: every situation is different. Some people will feel the NHS is where they need to go for help and I respect that choice. We are all doing our best. In my situation, making a decision concerning my child’s welfare, I feel it would have been irresponsible if I HAD put Jessie into the hands of such self-styled ‘gender professionals’.
I agree we th about the NHS pages. There is no mention of other possible causes of gender identity difficulties. The same is true of the information given on the Childline website. Those of us parenting teens with this difficulty know that we are faced with a complex psychological problem that needs skilled help to resolve. Even if for some individuals, transitioning may be the answer, the information presented here is a classic example of an oversimplified “one size fits all” solution which has gained traction in the mental health profession, and fed into all the transgender workshops attended by teachers and NHS workers across the country. So by the time our teenagers even get to see a gender therapist (and I expect there must be many who are also alarmed at the massive rise in referrals), their alternative identity has been affirmed and reaffirmed, to the extent that it may become very hard to walk away from, especially if parents are told they must buy into it all or risk a suicidal child. And if this didn’t involve the proposition of surgery and lifelong hormones, it would be less serious.
My wife and I have a 17yo daughter who came out as gay sometime last summer. (She is actually my step daughter, but I love here like she’s my own. I’ve known her since she was 12.) The coming out was a bit of a surprise at first, but we accept it. Then, just a couple of weeks before Christmas, our daughter announced to my wife, via text message, that she was transgender and wanted to be a boy. That was a total surprise. My wife has been a wreck ever since; questioning her parenting, beating herself up for missing “the signs” and not being there for her daughter. She made an appointment with a therapist at a location which specializes in transgender and gender dysphoric issues. The first thing we were told is that “he”, our daughter, needs to be called by his new name, and that we needed to get him in for blood work to get started on testosterone therapy. Unbelievable! First session and we’re told to accept it and here’s how we get started on hormones.. While our daughter may be gay, I am convinced that she is NOT a boy in a girl’s body. I think that continuing to take her to a “therapist” who is pushing the transgender idea, and suggesting that we start hormones as soon as possible, poses a real risk to our daughter.
There are a lot of parallels between the lives of our daughters: being a bit of a tomboy, spending way too much time online, being a lesbian. I’ve suggested installing software on her phone to see what sites she’s visiting, what pictures she posting and looking at, text messages she’s sent and received. I think immersing ourselves in our daughters online activity may help give insight into what’s going on.
My wife is convinced that her daughter is transgender and that if we don’t embrace it and accept it, that she will be suicidal. On several occasions, I’ve been told, “There’s a 40% suicide rate with transgender kids.” I’ve never seen our daughter as depressed, much less suicidal.
Thank you for sharing your experience with your daughter. This was immensely helpful to me, and has inspired me to do a lot more research.
Thank you!
RIch, I was your wife. I spent a full year not believing this and not accepting this. But then, when thoughts of suicide were expressed and I had a gender therapist telling me that the biggest reason why transgender kids commit suicide is because they were not supported by their parents, I felt I had no choice. We did the whole name and pronoun and binder thing this past year (you can read my story above) and the whole time I kept wavering between is this real? am I deluding myself? until it became abundantly clearer that my doubts were valid. Only by reading this and other websites over this past month did I become 99% convinced — and now I regret so much that I listened to these experts — because now I am having to figure out how to undue all of the positive affirmations my daughter has received since coming out. I am so angry at the many “experts” who happily took our money, scared us into believing them, never encouraging us to question anything — and now I have to figure it all out by myself.
I hope your wife will read the stories of those of us who have been there and learn from our mistakes.