4thWaveNow was founded in 2015 by Denise, the mother of a teenage girl who suddenly announced she was a trans man after a few weeks of total immersion in YouTube transition vlogs and other trans-oriented social media. Denise’s daughter Chiara has since desisted from identifying as transgender and in 2019 cofounded an organization for desisted/detransitioned women, the Pique Resilience Project.
4thWaveNow founder Denise and friends.
In early 2015, after much research and fruitless searching for an alternative online viewpoint, Denise began writing about her deepening skepticism of the ever-accelerating medical and media fascination with the phenomenon of “transgender children.”
4thWaveNow has now expanded to feature not only Denise’s writing, but that of other parents, formerly trans-identified people, and others with professional expertise and experience with young people questioning their gender identity.
Readers, please introduce yourselves and feel welcome here.
From the founder:
I created this site because mine is a viewpoint that is seldom publicly heard: that of a left-leaning parent who is critical of the dominant paradigm regarding transgender politics and treatment. My primary concern is children, teens, and people in their early 20s, particularly girls who are contemplating medical transition. While I may disagree with their views, I do understand that consenting adults have the right to do what they choose with their own bodies and minds.
Online, I have been accused of being “unsupportive,” even abusive, simply for daring to question whether lifelong medical treatment–injections and plastic surgeries–is the answer for every young person who has gender dysphoria. In my world, caring about, listening to, and lovingly parenting a child or young adult is not necessarily a synonym for unexamined “support” for everything the child says or wants. In fact, one of the main jobs in parenting a teen is, not coercion, but the offering of alternatives; discussing, and sometimes disagreeing.
It is my contention that the medical and psychological establishments are letting us all down in their rush to diagnose young people as “transgender,” then to give the message that medical treatment is the answer. Much of my writing now and in the future will focus on the adults who are encouraging so many young people to pursue extreme treatments. And I do consider hormones and surgery extreme treatment, if there is any possibility that something less drastic might be a solution.
At4thWaveNow, we are interested in hearing from parents, family members, concerned professionals, and allies from across the political spectrum. However, we are not in accord with conservative, religious-fundamentalist views about sexuality. We are strong supporters of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Please read blog posts and articles carefully before asking questions or commenting, and check our our FAQs for answers to commonly asked questions.
Even my child’s pediatrician made me feel like crap after I told her in private and confidence about my daughter’s disruptive behavior. My daughter never has any inclination of being anything except what she was born to be . We fussed over dresses, makeup, she would steal mine. I remember not even that long ago when I would suggest she just trimmed her hair she would refused. She had beautiful think long hair and would begged to go straighten it with her friend. Her hair is short not and has 2 different color. used to be black. Last march I took her phone away as a consequence of her attitude and she reported to her school I hit her and that she would harm herself. I was so shocked and hurt. At the hospital she told the child services rep that she was transgender and not totally believes she is. She insists she needs hormone therapy and surgery to remove her bready. She is 34DD and refuses to wear a bra. Sits in think sweaters all day despite the hot weather. Want me to call her by her pronoun and absolutely refuse to hear anything I have to say. I took her to see an endocrinologist for irregular periods and was told she may have polycystic ovary syndrome and diabetes. I was horrified when the doctor suggest that if it turns out diabetes is a factor my child may not want to take the meds to resolve it or help with her huge weight gain if she plans to transgender as this would means lowering her testosterone level. I mean would I not consider my child health because it interferes with her wishes to transition later?? My daughter was always had manipulative behavior whenever she wants something, now she uses it as depression. I am absolutely sure she is overwhelmed and struggles, but she does not show any symptoms of depression. She is high function gets awesome grades, hang out with friends , play video games, likes to cook, bake and eat junk like any other teenager. As soon I scold her or don’t agree with something she announced she is “depressed”. She went three times since march 2019 to the emergency because her friends and her called crisis hotline when I said no to giving her my son’s computer and not letting her hang out with friends. I don’t know what to do about the identity issue. Its keeping up at night and we are both seeing a psychiatrist . I am told to take sleeping pills and anti depressant but I know I’m not depressed. The psychiatrist don’t believe my child is a boy but everyone else , including her friends thinks she is. I am so lost. I love my child with all my heart but because I am not willing to do what she wants she don’t trust me or believe I care. I say I support her but deep down I cant.
Hello, Faye.
Unfortunately it sounds as if your already-manipulative daughter has hit upon the ultimate teen manipulation tactic in claiming she is trans. While any other manipulation tactic can easily be seen for what it is and is called out by parents, doctors, therapists and teachers, claiming to be trans is basically untouchable and will be taken at face value by those who should know better. A teen claims to be trans and all dialog stops, the blinds are drawn closed, open doors are shut and locked. All of her manipulative and otherwise poor behavior will be explained away as happening “because she is trans and needs to be supported as a male.” But if she is using her trans ID as a way to hold power over and control the adults in her life (and maybe her friends, too), wouldn’t it be foolish to believe that transitioning would ease her depression and unhappiness for the long term? Perhaps she doesn’t want to be male, she wants to be in control. If control is what she is after, transitioning could make matters worse once she realizes that she cannot control the permanent masculinization that testosterone will force upon her female body.
Just my armchair NON-professional thoughts. I feel for you; you are in a tough spot, for sure. Hang on to that psychiatrist who does not believe your daughter is a boy, as non-affirming professionals can be very difficult to find. Also, consider joining the parents forum at https://gendercriticalresources.com/Support/. Nonmembers will see very limited postings at that link, but once you join and your account is activated by a moderator (can take a few hours or overnight), you will have access to the members-only forums, where you’ll find support and advice from like-minded parents.
Hello! I’m not an expert at any of these subjects but as a woman with polycystic ovarian syndrome, I know that depression can be one of the effects of the hormonal imbalance in her body. Having said that however, it is never ok to use any medical condition (whether real or not) to threaten or manipulate someone. Her health should be the number one priority. PCOS can be dangerous if left untreated and transitioning might make things worse since women with PCOS need more estrogen and not male hormones.
I am a bit late to this website and am grateful to have found it. Your story is very similar to my own with a couple of glaring differences. My daughter graduated early from college, was dating a man and began her career thousands of miles away (I thought). What I didn’t know and this is the critical takeaway: What she was actually doing was transitioning and I found out AFTER hormone treatments AND surgery. You are still physically present in a parental position and exasperating as it must be, it could be way worse. As it is, you may be able to get through this without severing the bond or breaking down. Just as someone else wrote, your daughter has designed a manipulation strategy that is a winner for her. She has a support network that is easily accessible, 100% on her side with you as the obstructionist on the other side keeping her from her true identity, etc. It would be of great interest to hear how you are are coping.
I have a quick question for the founder/mother whose daughter desisted: what have you done to accomplish that? I would give my life just to have my daughter change to how she used to be before suddenly announcing that she is trans.
4thWaveNow founder here: First, it has to be understood that the young person who desists really makes her own decision, ultimately. There is no magic formula that will guarantee any outcome (desist or stay trans-identified). That said, in my opinion, it’s important not to forbid your teenager from expressing herself as she wishes with hair styles, clothing, or any activity that might be more typical for males. In our case, this meant a “men’s” haircut, underwear, shoes, the whole bit (all paid for by me). It’s also helpful to try to understand why she thinks life would be better for her if she transitioned (ask!) Where I personally stopped short was in endorsing that her gender-atypicality meant she was literally a boy. Rather, I openly supported the full extent of “gender nonconformity” as an expression of her unique femaleness (even if “atypical”). The other thing which I believe is really important for many young people is having a chance to get away from the Internet and into nature or a different environment. In my daughter’s case, that was 9 months away on a horse farm. Maybe explore with her options for summer or after high school, if she’s still living at home. (If she is living on her own as a young adult, perhaps you can open a dialogue?)
My daughter herself has written about her experiences here.
And here is our joint interview.
Hope this is helpful.
Wow, this is powerful, thank you for sharing! Do you think it helps if I read this to her?
If she’s willing to listen. You can’t force it. If she is, don’t pin your hopes on a positive response in the moment. But you never know how it might percolate; it may have an impact later if not now.
Quick question for the founder — how did you find the horse farm. My daughter loves animals and this kind of setting would be great for her, but how do you find these places? Thanks for any info or links.
Yes, where did u find the horse farm? My daughter presently does equine therapy!
Research working-student opportunities at professional horse farms. Different disciplines (e.g. dressage or show jumping) have different opportunities.
Good luck!
I have a 14 year old boy who out of the blue told me he was agender last year. He has an affirmative therapist and now he identify himself as trans. This case is similar to other stories: friends that are queer or trans, social media influence. In your interview you said that you found a mental health therapist vs affirmative. How did you find him/her?I do not agree with the “go with the flow” no questioning way our therapist has . Also, I was told if I do not support I might not have a child to love. I really would like to change therapist.
Thank you, as a parent, for your comments. Looking forward to reading more from you. Your voice and experience are invaluable.
I literally just read your blog dated in 2015, which brought me to your site.I have to tell you what a a relief to know that my daughter and I are not alone! It’s as though we are sharing/shared an identical experience. I cannot thank you enough for your bravery in sharing this incredibly difficult time. I have been motivated to attempt to find a therapist for my daughter, but apprehensive of their potential agenda. So, after reading this today, I feel all the more reassured that I’m on the right path. Thank you!!
absolutely you are not alone. visit the gendercritical support board at https://gendercriticalresources.com/Support
Many, many parents are there, sharing their experiences and their pain.
I am from Canada, and my daughter has recently announced that she is transgender. She never showed any signs of gender dysphoria until she met a group of girls online who mostly identify as trans about six months ago.. She initially changed her pronoun to They/Them and now has changed it to He. Prior to this she never showed any signs of gender dysphoria but has always experienced an extreme emotional reality. As a baby, she would have constant tantrums, and from kindergarden to grade 7, she had constant melt downs at school. She struggles with receiving any feedback, getting something wrong on her school work or being corrected in any way by a teacher, makes her very defensive and angry. She also struggles when she is not in the limelight. When other kids are sharing a story, she tunes them out and shows no interest. She regularly interrupts people, and when others communicate to her that she is being rude, she responds with anger towards them. Mood disorders and hypersensitivity run in my family. I have very similar issues to her, and can see myself in her. She has always asked “why am I like this?” and I explain she has a brain and an emotional reality like me, and like all of my cousins – we are different. It’s not easy, but we are special. And our struggles give us gifts if we can work through them and take accountability for our actions and admit when we are wrong. She is fairly reflective, and I would say she has a good relationship with me and my husband, her Dad.
My husband and I are liberal thinkers. We are happy that the world is becoming more inclusive and that children are being raised in schools with a more tolerance and acceptance. However, this sudden appearance of gender dysphoria has me so concerned. I can hardly sleep at night and my anxiety levels are consuming me. I worry so much that teachers and mental health clinicians are compelled to accept and affirm everything children are saying when they say they are trans. No one asks, “how much time do you spend on the internet reading about trans ideology?” No one seams to think it’s worth focusing on.
How I see it is, there has been a strong presentation of mental health issues since she was born. Even as a young toddler, I could see her emotionality was so much more intense than other children. I have seen this in myself my whole life too. I have sought help and have done loads of work on my mental health recovery. I see that she has grabbed on to this new identity as a way of labeling why her emotions are so intense. 7 months ago, she was begging me for bikinis and high heels. As a younger child, she wanted to play with dolls and fluffy animals and girly dress up costumes. She spoke on end about her crushes on boys.
I know I need to be supportive and careful on how I proceed so she feels I support her and so I keep her close to me. But I’m so worried with the affirmative approach that we (teachers, doctors, instructors, parents, society) are condoning a path that isn’t necessarily the path that will help her recover and manage her true issues. I am going to a parent support group tonight – first time. I hope I meet other parents like me there. I need something to help keep me from sinking deeper into this fear.
This sounds like I wrote it! About my 12 yo daughter. Could you please give us an update on your situation. My intuition tells me it’s a phase or influence..
Hi Rebeca, I am also in Canada. Would you like to connect? How old is your daughter? I can totally relate to your feeling totally helpless and anxiety ridden. I am a wreck.
I so appreciate your courage and initiative to set up this site & provide resources for teens and parents. Thank you for speaking up in the face of such resistance. As I read your story and your daughter’s story, I wonder why there is so little room/respect for your alternative viewpoint. Why is the medical & psychological “community” so resistant? It can’t only be about perceived harm to gender dysphoric youth, is it motivated by a desire to make money on these expensive, long-lasting “treatments”? It seems too virulent to not involve money in some way. 🙁
@marcusevanspsyc I’m trying to publicise @sueevansprotect campaign to bring the treatment of Gender Dysphoric children to court for judicial review. I would be grateful if I could join your Facebook page which has articles and a link to the crowd justice page. https://www.facebook.com/sueevansprotect/
Marcus, we would be very happy to post an article about this issue. Please contact us.
I think this is an extremely worthy campaign and very happy to be supportive of it!
I know everyone here is hoping to find the magic formula for desistance, and we all know there really isn’t one. The other day, though, I stumbled on something that started a conversation that feels like it could lead in that direction, so I wanted to share it in case it’s helpful to others.
It boils down to: Focus on what “cis” means, not on what “trans” means.
My daughter is 19 and for at least three years now has been identifying as male, spending a lot of time with trans friends and asking for (but not getting) hormones, etc. I am trying to spend a lot of time with her, connecting on things that have nothing to do with the gender discussion. So I had taken her to lunch and she made some reference to “cis” people or “cis” privilege (a typical trans-cult talking point).
I asked her not to use that label, that I rejected it, that it did not describe me or anything about my “identity.” She began sort of interrogating me — well, you need a label to define all those people that aren’t trans, right?
I explained to her that cis is back-formation an imaginary “Other” invented by trans activists to define themselves against. It’s not an identity that anyone would voluntarily adopt — first because is freighted with negative implications of exclusion, oppression and unearned privilege. This part is important because kids like her are very sensitive to the political implications of this sort of thing. The idea of an outside group imposing an identity label on you feels wrong to them.
THEN I said, it’s also because “cis” implies that everyone who is not “trans” walks around all day feeling 100% comfortable and “identified” with the sex they were born too.
She said, “Well, aren’t you?” I said, “No” Boy was she shocked.
I told her I didn’t even know what it meant to “feel female.” I asked her if she knew what it meant.
She kind of said, no, she just didn’t think she felt female, but she didn’t really know what that would be like, or what feeling male was like either. Indeed, it kind of emerged that her sense that she must be “male” mostly came out of this idea of not feeling “female.” (on the theory that if you don’t feel female, you must be male). And she was absolutely stunned to hear that I didn’t either.
A long conversation followed this. Mostly her asking me questions and me gently interrogating some of her assumptions about what “most people” feel like in terms of their gender identification. We also talked about biological sex and for the first time, she acknowledged having a female body that she doesn’t love, but that she realizes really can’t be changed into a true male body. And that she liked being able to look sort of hot in either boy-ish or girl-ish clothes, depending on how she feels on a given day.
In the end, she said, “I guess I’m just non-binary, in this body.”
Baby steps. Anyway, thought this might be helpful to some of you.
SO helpful. Thank you for sharing. I’m not a girly girl myself and I try and point this out in subtle ways to my daughter. We have also talked about the wide spectrum of female and male looks.
This is so helpful, thank you so much for sharing. My daughter has only just turned 14 but has decided in the last few months that she is trans. I’m trying to read up as much as possible and this reply was so helpful. This is my argument too – what on earth does it feel like to be make or female? Why can’t you just be you and not label yourself?
I came along to this late, but I agree. My daughter has not identified as trans or non-binary, but has said things that make me wonder if she is heading in that direction.
We started talking about trans identity the other day, and I pointed out that I don’t know what trans people mean when they say that AFAB cis people “feel female” or “feel like women.” I said that I view myself more as a soul/mind, for lack of a better term, that happens to be in a female body. I said that I’m perfectly okay with being in a female body, but that the female body feels, to me, like the container in which my real self resides. And my real self isn’t a gender. It’s just me.
I ended with, “I guess some people would say that makes me non-binary, but I don’t think that would be fair of them. People who feel like me should still be allowed to be women.”
She was shocked, utterly shocked, to learn that her mother feels this way.
Then we talked about how we feel when people assume we’re men online. One thing I said was, “I used to sometimes feel weirdly good when someone online assumed I was a guy. It was like some sort of weird…”
My daughter, finishing my sentence: “Compliment?”
Me: Yes, exactly. I think that feeling, me feeling like I was being complimented, was internalized misogyny on my part.
Then the conversation drifted into other topics.
Thank you for this helpful, personal vignette – a very perceptive observation and wise approach to open up conversation. It seems to me that there is not a living person who has not felt some kind of dissatisfaction (or even disassociation) with their own bodies (weight, height, e.g.)- that feeling doesn’t necessarily mean that something is fundamentally “off” with oneself – that’s just the experience of having a body!
Another conversational approach I wonder about: How does one determine if their “feeling” like a member of the opposite sex is a true experience?
It seems to me, as a man, that only I can truly and empirically know what it means to be a man based on my embodied experience. How can someone who is a biological female (but desires to be one) really know if their “feeling” like they are a man is accurate? It assumes that they “know” what men feel like when virtually all of our experience as men is embodied experience (filtered through male-ness).
For example, if I were a woman, and a man said to me that he knows what its like to be a woman – just because he feels like it – I would be highly skeptical if he really could/did because of my embodied, biological experiences as a woman.
These are just some of the complexities of this issue that should give us pause about encouraging or non-preventing our children towards this madness.
Hello, I am a mum in the UK relieved to have found this site and the ideas expressed by the founder, which I feel fully aligned with. My 12 year-old daughter admitted to me she feels male a week ago, and that she’s been feeling this way for 2 years (I believe since around the onset of puberty). My partner and I are blindsided. We have talked as a family and I took my child yesterday to get a short haircut, baggy tops and sports bras. She’d told me she started binding after our initial talk and I have tried to steer her away from binding. I have talked to my daughter gently and lovingly, and explained that we will try to support her but that we are uncomfortable with and that we must always keep talking even if we disagree, but that her Dad and I will not do certain things. We have not spoken to friends or family. My partner’s family is extremely traditional and conservative and cut off his older brother when he came out as gay. So I desperately need to connect with other parents going through this. And I mean desperately. Everyone else we know is either Competitive Parent, religious, or judgemental about issues such as this. I battle with mental health issues of my own generally. My partner admitted that he has cried most days since we sat down with our daughter. I contacted a parent support group last week and am waiting for them to respond; they seem underfunded.
Ana, you are definitely posting in the right place. So many of us share your experience. I know people on this board will give you great advice. Here’s mine, for what it’s worth:
1. Get your daughter into therapy with a therapist who does not practice the “affirming” method that is currently in vogue. Work with someone who is compassionate, human and smart, who is willing to take the time to explore your girl’s real issues, beyond this stated desire to change sexes. Put slightly differently, most adolescent girls feel like their bodies are mutating out of control, and hate it (didn’t you? I sure did) – but nowadays, they are encouraged to interpret that feeling as meaning they must really be male. A good therapist can explore this with her and work on her self-acceptance and what else might be going on.
2. Get her off the internet: A lot of us here feel that our kids got a lot of this “trans” stuff from Internet chatrooms, discussion boards and Youtube, where trans activists push these toxic messages and the “trans” solution. If you think this might be the case with your daughter, she is young enough that you have a lot of ability to control this. If I were you I’d be doing a lot to monitor and limit internet use.
3. Spend time with her as a family: One thing a lot of us have found is that the whole trans thing takes on a cult-like quality, where our kids spend less and less time with their families, doing the normal, fun things they used to enjoy – the things that have nothing to do with gender. So do everything you can to connect with your daughter by doing things she has always enjoyed doing with you, whether it’s arts or science activities, going to movies or sport events, playing outdoors or whatever. She wants to connect with you and her Dad in healthy ways, so I would really work to make that happen as much as possible.
4. There are a lot of different ways that parents deal with their kids asking to be called by a different name, new pronouns and so on. We did not do it and told her that the rest of the world was probably going to affirm her in this way; but that we needed to be the people who showed her we see her for who she really is. For us, this has turned out to be a positive thing.
5. Get educated about the talking points and bogus “facts” that the trans lobby feeds these kids online, so that when you hear them from your daughter, you’ll be able to calmly question what she might think she “knows.” — i.e. that cross-sex hormone treatment is completely reversible and safe (it’s not) or that kids who aren’t allowed to transition on demand frequently commit suicide (they don’t — this is the newest version of “if you don’t let me do this, I’m going to hold my breath until I turn blue”)
Okay, I will get off my soap-box now. These are some things I’ve found helpful and I’m sure others will give you more insights. As you know there is no magic bullet. Best of luck.
Where can we get educated about these talking points and how to debunk them?
Read the book by Abigail Shier: Irreversible. I just finished it and learned a lot. Keep calm, find support.
Where do you find a therapist who does not support the affirming method? Do you just ask the person on the phone? I want to get my daughter into the right therapist because the original one I took her to refused to even talk to me stating confidentiality. After my daughter stopped seeing her my daughter informed me that her therapist gave her info about where to buy hormones online! My daughter who is a beautiful 16 year old girl came to the conclusion she was trans during the pandemic. After the boy she was dating told her he was trans. It was like she decided this to try and stay with him. Then it was an onslaught of social media, chat rooms, and YouTube videos. I hate to admit it but I had no idea of everything she was watching and doing online. When I caught her doing drugs, I took away the electronics. I started going through them and I found what I can only compare to cult like chat rooms. Her TicTok video stream was showing ONLY trans rhetoric. I am not kidding not one other kind of video. She had told her friends and they started calling her by a different name. I have told her that I love her so much but I will not call her a different name. I have been totally alone and every therapist seems to want to just jump into everything from affirmation to hormones. My daughter was picked on a lot and it is like this is the first thing that makes her feel special with her peers. Before this group of friends she begged for me to buy her clothes that shouted femininity, wanted to sing, wanted push up bras and makeup. It was in a matter of months she decided that she’s trans. She has never shown any “male” tendencies. In fact she used to tease me about being such a Tom boy. I am lost and it is so hard to find any help. I have talked with her and assured her that she is loved no matter what she chooses in life. I have begged her to wait until she’s closer to 30 to even think about permanent changes to her body. I am desperate and not getting any help.
I also live in the UK and until a year or two ago I was in the same position as you. Reading your post I can feel your desperation because I relive what our family went through for about 2 years. We were lucky, very lucky, but I still feel angry that our daughter and our family had to go through this and that other families continue to do so, some with tragic consequences. I so much want to use our experience to help people like you and your daughter but I am not sure how much help I can be. What I will say is that like our daughter, your daughter is young and so almost certainly she will desist with this, as almost all do, before she can be given any irreversible ‘treatment’. I don’t deny there are some genuinely transgender people but these tween / teenage girls are not in that category.
I have tried to speak to my daughter and to work out what we did that helped, and what we did that was unhelpful, so we can support others. She prefers not to discuss the issue saying it is all in the past. She talks about young people experimenting with who they are and the importance of protecting them from irreversible actions until they are in their late 20s and have hopefully worked out who they are. I have reflected a lot on things I feel i did well and the times I messed up, as we all do in these painful situations.
From what you write I think you are supporting your daughter very well indeed. You are allowing her to experiment safely by cutting her hair and wearing gender neutral clothes. We also did this, and we also used her chosen gender neutral name and asked to school to do so. I spoke to her about the dangers of binding and advised her to wear sports type bras instead which she did.
Initially we were scared to disagree with her but learned quickly that it was Ok to say we understood this was how she was feeling but that we did not feel it meant she was actually a boy. I spoke to her about the dangers of hormone treatments and surgery at times and she would become very upset. I think in hindsight I should have stayed away from the topic more to avoid confrontation unless she brought it up which she rarely did. We saw a CAMHS therapist who was lovely. She referred my daughter to GIDS at her request but in therapy worked on her anxiety and mood issues. She helpfully described how she felt about her gender as a ‘stage’ in her life that may or may not change and advised remaining at each stage ie using preferred name and clothes and making no changes unless and until it felt uncomfortable. It was thus never a focus for therapy. We waited 6 months for a GIDS appointment and it was really a waste of time except that taking her showed my daughter we were taking her feelings seriously. I made it clear to the therapists ( when seen without my daughter) my feelings about ROGD and went ballistic when he called my daughter “he” when she hadn’t asked to me called by male pronouns. The therapists floundered, it was abundantly clear they did not know how to deal with us – a family who weren’t blindly accepting of this phenomenon and knew it to be the result of social contagion. My daughter didn’t find it helpful
I learned a lot about being patient and waiting and seeing, which I find tremendously difficult. My instinct to sort this out for her was So strong. I cried almost every day for best part of a year. I learned that talking about it too much was counter productive. My need to to understand her had to take a back seat to giving her space to work this out but with support when she needed it. I would take her out and do things with her alone so we would have time to talk and this way we had periodic short conversations. She is very intelligent and questions everything and I encouraged her to look at all the evidence about transgenderism. I would talk to her about things I had read, sometimes by detransitioners and talk about keeping an open mind as outcomes weren’t the same for everyone, I would email her things posted on here and similar sites and suggest she read them. I dont know if she did or not.
Gradually over time she worked out she was not male, declaring herself gender neutral then female. The latter was very hard for her to do, she had made such an issue of not being female. We tried not to celebrate too enthusiastically – I didn’t want her to feel foolish and also I was scared she would change her mind again. It took a long time for me to stop fearing she would change again but I am getting there. My husband always said she would work through this and coped better than me. I read a lot of stuff on here and other sites and knew many people don’t change their mind until after hormones and / or surgery and it terrified me. That she was 12 when she came out as male certainly gave us the time we needed.
I am glad you have found a support group and hope you are able to attend soon. I didn’t find anything like that and this site was my best support. Keep doing what you are doing, support her in all she feels she needs to do as long as they are safe. Have the courage to tell her “no” if it isn’t safe – thats our job as a parent even when it makes us unpopular, but explain that that is the reason why.
Sorry about the ramble but I hope some of this is of help to you and others. I wish you and your daughter the very best
So helpful, thank you so much. I feel so emotional reading this. This site is an absolute godsend.
Thank you for sharing. Your story has helped me with my own daughter.
Thank you for your comment. I have a 12 year old daughter who is not doing well with isolating, due to the pandemic, and on top of that she started puberty and her period. I allowed her on ONE social art website that was facilitated by an Outschool class, where she met a group of VERY troubled trans teens. She is now convinced she is trans. This is over a period of two months. She became very depressed at the prospect of being trans, although I don’t think she realizes that. I have taken away any means that she would have to access the internet and she is spending time with us as a family again. My husband and I have told her that we will accept that she may be a girl who is straight, a girl who is bisexual, a girl who is gay, a girl who is not interested in sex but she IS a GIRL. We are not backing down on that. Needless to say, I no longer sleep at night.
there’s an active online chat group for parents in your situation. Very supportive. smart and kind people.
https://gendercriticalresources.com/Support/
Thank you; I joined yesterday and am awaiting approval 🙂
Hello Ana, Elizabeth has really given some great feed back here. I couldn’t agree with her more on any of her points. My daughter and I have been openly discussing this since September and in that process I have learned that she is really been struggling with depression and anxiety. There is substantial research available that supports that Gender Dysphoria is a driven by underlying mental health issues such depression and anxiety. It’s not easy to find a good therapist, little alone one that you are confident will not gender affirm or prescribe the puberty blockers and other drugs, but it’s a worthy search. It has taken me months to find the right teen clinic for my daughter and they came by recommendation of my personal health care providers. Initially, my daughter demanded she only see a gender affirming therapist. After I explained that I will not allow her to be treated as such nor given the drugs, she has since backed down and reevaluated and has agreed to see a therapist that will truly help her wit her depression and anxiety.
Regarding the information source, internet…etc, I was shocked to learn that my daughter had been taught comprehensive transgender information in her middle and high school health class. I was really in disbelief to begin with, but after doing my homework, I have confirmed it is in fact true. The subject matter wasn’t listed in a class syllabus or in the text book, but rather teacher’s optional additions to the class. I deliberated taking on the liberal district with my traditional “damn them all” tenacity, but my daughter really needs me to focus on her right now. Therefore, I have transitioned her to the on line education option that our state makes available. She is actually happy about this and I think is a way, is relieved to be out of that environment.
Elizabeth is right, they do act as a cult and drive a wedge between us and our children. So, amidst all you and your family are going through, stick together. She needs you more than ever! There are some days that is is so tough and you think you can’t help her or make a difference, but you can and you will.
Susan
i’m a nonbinary minor. i struggle with my gender plenty. you guys probably don’t know too much about the whole inner trans community, so i feel like i should shine some light on y’all. ask me anything.
I have a question. Why do you think your experience of your gender is any different from that of every girl or woman who is uncomfortable in her body (which is pretty much all of us) or who doesn’t perform or identify with conventional feminine stereotypes, styles of dress, interests or personality traits? Put slightly differently, are you aware that literally everyone is non-binary, including everybody who goes by the pronouns commonly associated with their biological sex? If so, what are your thoughts on the matter?
so, yeah, i’m aware it’s not the most usual or comprehensible of genders. i’m not actually all that uncomfortable in my own body, especially since i’ve started taking my antidepressants (20 mg of prozac every morning). every girl i know is super uncomfortable in her body, wants to look different and all that. it’s not that i think i look wrong, it’s that i think i think wrong. i’ll somedays be very curious about what it’s like to have a penis, somedays be disgusted by all genitalia. she and her sound weird to me. they sound wrong, but i’ve tried he/him and it sounds wrong, and i’m trying they/them but it’s not perfect either. i need to get used to whatever pronouns i’m gonna use, i guess. i think what a lot of people think about nonbinary people is ‘everybody feels strange about gender and sex’ but, like, i’m not saying we all have to be different. maybe there’s a lot more nonbinary people than you and i think, and we just don’t know yet. i really think gender is on the verge of changing completely. i hope i answered that okay, thanks for the really insightful question!
I think you have mental illness and an unhealthy obsession with sex and gender. You admit to taking anti depressants, and that they make you feel happy. BUT you persistently are going back to your obsession with sex, gender and genitalia. Your “insight” is affirming to all parents and concerned citizens that all this non binary and transgender ideology is an unhealthy obsession with something children are being exposed to too early in their brain development
Maybe our universe is an atom in the eye of a dog in a much larger universe. Maybe universes are dog eye atoms all the way down. How is this useful to anyone if we can’t even get within sight of the edge of our atom in a dogs eye?
I think what I’m really asking, though, is why make such a production out of it, with special labels and pronouns, when it sounds like you feel some variation of how nearly everyone feels about their gender identity, especially when young, and at various points throughout our lives.
Good point, I felt a bit ‘male’ inside sometimes as a child, didn’t bother me, it wasn’t an issue. More of a case of, oh that’s interesting.
basically just because it makes me feel better. it sounds like a dumb reason, and it surely could be considered one. but, why would you ever eat the cream before the cookie in an oreo? because you like to. you like it that way, so it doesn’t really matter to you if your friends eat their oreos whole or the cookie before the cream.
things become useful when you say they’re useful. the only meaning anything has is the meaning we, as humans, assign to them. so, it’s important if someone cares. and, let me tell you, someone always cares.
Elizabeth, Jessie and Susan, thank you for the fantastic advice. I feel exactly the same and that is the direction we want to take. Yes, my daughter and I were referred to CAMHS in the summer because she had been self harming and we didn’t know why. She didn’t open up to the counsellor then. Now we know the cause. I have chased up CAMHS because of this development. I am a bit worried because I have read that some people’s experience was that CAMHS was too pro affirmative but it looks like Jessie’s family were happy with theirs. Your posts have been a great comfort (I am crying a lot). Good luck to your families too.
My impression is that CAMHS in the UK are more cautious than GiDS, they know they don’t understand ROGD and treat what they know ie the anxiety depression and stuff. Certainly our local CAMHS don’t push the young person and listen to families. Its ok to say to them you are doubtful that your daughter is trans but that you support her anyway. You will be allowed to speak to them in private if you need to do so. Good luck
Yes, really best of luck, Ana. I have a lot of faith that this tide is going to turn and a lot of the insanity we are seeing in the medical/therapy community to affirm, affirm, affirm, is going to ebb. Stories of detransition are already starting to mount.
In the meantime, you have many options short of caving in to your daughter’s very normal pre-teen/teenage rebellion. At the end of the day, I really believe she wants guidance, she wants to identify with you, and she wants your help becoming the terrific, unique person you know she can be. I’ll be praying for you and your family.
Thank you both, again…:) and all the best to you too.
hey guys, what is it like to have a cis/not trans family? i legitimately have no idea, i think it would help me a lot if i knew. both my parents are trans, my sibling is nonbinary, and i have one non-trans sister. my parents were abused as kids, so i grew up in a dysfunctional family. they started to transition when i was 5, and things have been steadily improving from there. this is my normal. what is yours?
Hi, what I can add is that it seems there’s a hypervigilance about finding the right labels, pronouns, gender identity, etc. If I lived in a trans world I’d probably be overly self aware, constantly wondering if i arrived, measured up, or was male/female enough perhaps rejecting my body all along.
The thing is that if you leave yourself alone (not self obsess), you might realize you can enjoy other things in life. I’m noticing this (contestant self-doubt) can affect anyone. It’s not just trans.
I think acceptance and contentment is a gift and leads to peace. We’re probably all trying to find this and not “fight” so hard to be safe.. it’s worth exploring why we feel this pull in the first place. Perhaps it’s anxiety that’s at the root and learning to manage that can help. I see parents on here feeling afraid and anxious and others approaching this will curiosity and “watchful waiting.” I invite you and myself to connect to something greater than ourselves to guide us and help us feel secure.
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I had commented on this site over a year ago. The advice and tips I received were invaluable. That’s why 4thWaveNow is such a welcome resource for those, like myself, who haven’t bought into the trans ideology. Like most others here, I’m not driven by bigotry, ignorance or religious zealotry. As a journalist, I’ve long been trained to be skeptical while also keeping an open mind. I’ve researched the trans movement and alleged science extensively. On most issues, my wife and I are on the progressive side.
But we clash on the transgender issue. Our 21-year old daughter, who so far has identified herself as “non-binary” has embarked on hormone treatments at a Gender Clinic. I’ve adamantly opposed medical interventions while my wife wholeheartedly supports them and is a true believer in the trans dogma. My attempts to get mother and child to be open minded have failed and they paint me as some Neanderthal on this issue. Exasperated, I’ve told both that I will not pay a penny for these interventions. Mom has undertaken to do so out of her own resources.
Here’s the key thing: daughter is diagnosed with 1) autism, 2) ADHD, 3) depression (for which she has been hospitalized twice for suicidal thinking), 4) borderline personality. She is on multiple medications and has been seeing therapists since she was a teen. My wife is impervious to my arguments that our daughter’s mental health disorders – contributing to her dysphoria – are at the root of her gender confusion and that the right kind of therapy needs to address the root causes, not dangerous medical interventions.
Unfortunately, daughter’s therapist in her college town has as a specialization “gender identity affirmation.” HEPA laws prevent us parents from knowing just what kind of “therapy” our child has been receiving. In fact, it was this therapist who paved the way for our daughter to seek treatment at the Gender Clinic – with mom’s full support. She’s asked me to talk with the physician giving testosterone to our daughter. I refused, responding, I would only end up charging her with medical malpractice. I cite past medical fads that gained wide currency, eventually to be discredited – after damaging or killing countless innocents: eugenics, lobotomy, insulin shock therapy, etc. Transgender therapy will eventually join this infamous lot, but only after it claims countless innocents of its own.
The upshot is this: I feel closed out, isolated and helpless. In our social circle, I’m seen as a close-minded retro bigot. Exasperated, I recently looked my wife straight in the eye and said, “You are enabling a troubled child toward health catastrophe, possibly suicide. Should that moment come, her blood will be on your hands. I hope you can look in a mirror and live with yourself.”
Needless to say, our marriage has suffered strains. We both are concerned about our daughter’s welfare – but from opposite sides. At this point, all I can do is to observe helplessly and hope for the best, but brace for the worst.
J, you are the same one. Don’t compromise. As your daughter is 21, not much you can do and not enabling is the right thing. She has free will. If you have a faith, I suggest pray.
Guys, I’m in the same boat. 23 year old son dropped the bomb on us last year. Just heartbreaking to watch him throw away so much promise
I’m so sorry, J. This is enormously stressful and frustrating. I’m glad you’re able to stand your ground and I hope you will all come out from the other side of this once it’s run its course.
My daughter and I are coming out of that tunnel now.
She is also on the autism spectrum, ADHD and anxious/depressed. She became obsessed with the idea of transgenderism via the internet. I saw her GP and explained all this but instead of counselling/therapy, my daughter was given testosterone.
I never believed in her transgender identity and I tried to talk rationally with her about it. At the time, she couldn’t listen to what I was saying. Now, three years later, she agrees with everything I said and we are both equally resentful that the GP prescribed hormone therapy without a moment’s thought.
Thankfully she stopped short of surgery, but the effects of testosterone are still there and no-one knows whether they will go away (her GP is completely uninterested. Like you, I feel like sueing for malpractice).
I hope your daughter will come to her senses in due course. With mine, she had to go so far in order to realise it wasn’t what she needed. She said no-one could have stopped her at the time. I think that’s quite a common story.
Thanks very much. Has your daughter now come to accept her biological sex? Also, can you share more about the effects of testosterone? I’m very worried about that, something my wife doesn’t get.
Yes, my daughter has now come to accept her true gender. She fully acknowledges that she was ‘brainwashed’ by the likes of Tumblr and was horrified by the level of sexualisation, sexism and misogyny she experiences, which she sought to escape by changing her gender. She has now turned to radical feminism.
The effects of testosterone have been:
Her voice has broken and she sings bass instead of alto.
Her hairline has receded.
She has to shave her face.
She has thick, curly hair on her legs, arms, belly and possibly in other places such as her chest, which she is too embarrassed to mention. I imagine her clitoris is enlarged.
We are not sure of any other side effects, long or short term as her GP had no clue what to look for but the GP has undertaken to try to find out. There is little information online. There is little acknowledgement that young women actually desist from transitioning. BUT THEY DO!
Since stopping hormone treatment (after at least three years of treatment), it has taken six months for her periods to return. She is now going through a third puberty with the usual spots, mood swings, etc..
Nothing else has changed and we don’t know whether it will, but I hope with all my heart that she will ‘re-feminise’. It’s all been such a hard lesson to learn and for someone already suffering from body dismorphia, now having these strongly male traits is very hard to cope with.
I hope it’s not too upsetting to read all this, J.
As others have said, our daughters have to find their way out of this insane place and we can only do so much – the main thing being to be there when they need us, no matter what.
Hello,
My wife and I are going through the very tumultuous experience with our 16 year old daughter. It would be good if we could chat if you’re willing.
I am so sorry you are going through this. Most of us have been there — but it must be infinitely harder when parents are not on the same page. I just want to offer that even if you are the only person in your daughter’s life who is in touch with reality, be that person for her. You can do more than observe helplessly.
Find every place you can to push for a reality-based perspective and to affirm your daughter for who she really is. Spend time with her, away from your wife, doing things that have nothing to do with gender. Build your relationship. Be clear and consistent. People can’t change sex. At some level, she knows that. Do not cave.
If it’s helpful, see a therapist of your own, because this is hard and will demand a lot of steel from you.
Sending good thoughts your way.
Thanks for the suggestions. But I’m afraid my daughter has built a Berlin Wall with me and, to some extent, even her mother. In her last year of college, she never returns home and views me as the enemy. I’ve tried to get her to look at opposing info; even offered to link her up with Rene Jax (who’s wonderfully supportive), but my daughter is brainwashed and has been for years, thanks also to her therapist. An extreme introvert, her whole life centers on the internet where she wallows in a propaganda bubble. I do my best to keep some channels open, but they’re not much. And, of course, my wife is on board with the trans agenda 100%.
J –
I am not a journalist, but in terms of what you’re experiencing, I have been in almost the exact same boat. Except I’m the mother, and my ex husband is like your wife.
It’s killing me that my GD daughter, who’s only 16, is being affirmed by her dad, she’s already made two attempts at S, and to make matters worse, she won’t talk to me (since ‘18) and they all think I’m a transphobic, bigoted, TERF (“close minded retro bigot” as you said) and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I love my child. My heart is more than broken, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take…
Needless to say, the details of my experience and yours may be different, but we share that horrible sadness… my best wishes to you and your family.
And to you. Stay in touch. Share updates.
N.B: My wife and I did see a family therapist, who was excellent. She counseled my wife to stop trying to convert me to the trans dogma. So, we have an ongoing armistice, though with occasional skirmishes breaking out.
Meanwhile, our daughter has legally changed her name to something that looks like it came out of some anime comic book.
I know that the follow-on to hormone treatments will be surgery. At that point, I can’t say how I’ll react, but it won’t be with calm. What these so-called gender surgeons are doing is no less barbaric than what the Nazi doctors did in the Third Reich. Only today’s quacks have willing patients.
Dear J, I pray that it won’t come to surgery. I sincerely hope that your daughter will come to her senses first.
My daughter backed out of surgery the morning she was due to have it. She had been psyching herself up to it by watching trans videos and saw an image of someone’s severed breasts, which made her realise the awful reality of what she was about to do. Meanwhile, I was in the throes of a nervous breakdown.
It’s so hard to feel so helpless, angry and terrified all at once.
You know this is wrong and you are sticking to your belief, which will be hugely supportive and helpful to your daughter in the long run.
At some point this whole tide will turn and the barbarity will be acknowledged and stopped. Even if only because people will start sueing the surgeons for the damage they are doing.
We need to address WHY young women hate being women, instead of being proud of their gender. Perhaps then they won’t be so susceptible to this horrific form of social contagion.
J, I am late to the story, here, but antidepressants and psych drugs numb all sexual feelings, and feelings in general. It would be incredibly easy for someone on these drugs to be indifferent to their gender and sexuality. The psych drugs are difficult in the long term, damaging endocrine, digestion (90% of serotonin is in the gut), and causing strange constellations of “fibromyalgia” “chronic fatigue” and – possibly even gender dysphoria.
This is a thing which is also being covered over by the medical profession. I went on an asexual forum to ask: how many of you had mothers on antidepressants? How many of them had been put on these drugs as children? I was scolded intensely, as that was not the ideology – “I am this way because I am this way, not because of anything environmental or causal.”
This may not be a popular opinion on this site, which tends to treat “dysphoria” as having root causes in “mental illness” – but problems in living, adapting, surviving as a child in these times is not necessarily indicative of disease, nor does it necessarily need to be drugged, especially in children.
The reason I am here is because of the damages caused by medical intervention on so many levels. Women with Lyme Disease or D-deficiencies get drugged for “depression and anxiety,” women in pain are considered to be “Hysterical” (even though medical profession no longer uses that word – the tendency to drug it is still rampant). This I share deeply with 4th Wave Now, as medical interventions – such as psych drugs – are sometimes irreversible. The person who comes out on the other side is not on the same trajectory as the person who got drugged.
Anyhow, I may be unpopular here for my views, as well, as it is easier to deal with “mental illness” as the root cause – instead of addressing the feelings, communications, and relationships (an example of this is Open Dialogue, as practiced in Finland and the USA) – or even the toxins in our food and environment. Many children on ASD and ADHD improve when grains/gluten and/or dairy is removed from diet. Many improve on fish oil. I’m not suggesting that all do – but these are harm-reduced options that are valuable to try before resorting to psychiatry.
OK, I’ll go back in my cave now, and hope I haven’t offended the whole list.
@JanCarol: With all due, I personally would greatly appreciate if this webspace remained focused on its intended topic and anchored in empirically validated facts. It is already EXTREMELY hard for liberal, rationally minded people to find even the smallest scraps of sanctuary from gender ideology without being forced to take shelter among the radical, Christian right. It is already VERY difficult for those of us willing to say that the gender emperor has no clothes to establish even a kernel of credibility amid the mass-hysteria/hypnosis and against the authoritarian rule of activist bullies. While I think I understand the connection you likely made between this medical scandal and your own (non-empirical) beliefs about anti-depressants, I don’t feel this is an appropriate place to post your opinions because the purpose of this board is not to discredit all of Western medicine. Just my own opinion.
CMM: Thanks so much for sharing your family’s experiences. I forwarded to my daughter and wife your child’s terrible journey, urging her to keep an open mind and not to reflexively diss me. Thank god, however, that your daughter came to her senses before undergoing mutilation. I wish my wife weren’t so brainwashed. She unquestioningly accepts at face value all the reassuring garbage the gender doctor feeds her. But I won’t give up and greatly appreciate the experiences you and others here share.
I wanted to tell you about Alice. Alice stuck in Neverneverland ….
I’m calling her Alice, because of the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole trap
My Alice, the one I’m concerned about has a story that feels alot like the one GuessimAfab wrote about in her article « Genderflux: How one young woman fell down the rapid-onset rabbit hole » you published last year in May 2019.
GuessimAfab’s story has helped me alot in understanding what my Alice, who seems to me a typical ROGD victim has been going through.
I must admit that sometimes it feels pretty lonely, worrying about the situation she’s got herself into and feeling like I have no real power over what’s been happening to her…
I live in France and over here, I haven’t found the equivalent of Transgendertrend ou FourthWaveNow or the Benjamin A Boyce interviews which are, at this point, with Gendercriticaldad’s blogspot and the Pique Resilience Project my main sources of intelligent supportive information at this time.
I’m a typical left-winger, Amnesty International, Extinction Rebellion, support for migrants and that sort of commitment. My professional occupation has to do with social work. So of course I’m against any discrimination, sort of blindly. Untill recently, I probably would have been systematically supportive of the LGBT movement without thinking to question any aspect of the battle for equal rights, or without suspecting that any radical ideological derivation might be going on.
But as it happens, I, like many others, have been unhappily confronted with the fact that just openly wondering what, exactly, is going on, how and why and when « T » became such an important part of « LGBT », who – what lobby – exactly is behind the medical pharmalogical solutions that are being advocated and pushed on to young vulnerable and uncomfortable people … the fact that even just mentioning the possibility of trauma being part of the picture or mentioning the ROGD studies, or simply questioning terms such as « assigned » when applied to biological sex observed at time of birth, well you know … any of that can get you , at the least called transphobic and discredited, get your accounts on social media trolled or cut down or maybe even, in extreme cases, make you loose your job.
I really have a hard time understanding why these issues wouldn’t be enough to make more people want, precisely, to question the unquestionable and to explore the meaning of the current seemingly untouchable transgender trend.
It doesn’t seem to work that way…
Anyway, things being the way they are, thank you – really – for being there and doing the research you do and for the actions you have been taking. It’s really helpful and gives me some hope for the future.
So back to Alice and her story that I feel the need to share.
At the age of ten years old, Alice was entrusted to my care That was around eleven years ago. I was then officially appointed as, as it is called in France, « trustworthy third party ». In theory that would mean that both parents, admitting not being able to provide a sufficiently psychologically secure environment for their child to grow peacefully up in and being concerned with the welfare of their daughter had chosen me to compensate, so their child could have what a child in everyday life needs.
In practice of course things usually are a bit more complicated.
In real life, it can feel like a very humiliating situation for parents and there’s a lot of mixed feelings and conflict of loyalties for the child to deal with too.
For me, there was a difficult balance to find between making up for parental insufficiencies so Alice could have as much love and security she should have and the same opportunities I had given my own daughters while making sure at the same time, the role – and the feelings – of her real parents were being preserved.
Alice’s first ten years had been spent in the beginning with her mother (her parents had separated before her birth), than with her grandmother when Alice’s mother was in hospital for depression, then again with her mother and a stepfather, then placed in a children’s home when her mother tried to commit suicide, then, at the age of 6, with her father who she barely knew at that time, then her mother again when her father’s addiction issues got too invasive… then, very briefly her grandmother again when her mother was once more in hospital for depression, then briefly too a foster family that turned out to be not as safe as expected (alcohol issues in the foster family) …
It was at that point that the decision was made, as I was in good terms with both parents and as my own children were grown, to entrust her to my care.
The decision was very official, but supposedly temporary, renewed every year for the first five years as I remember it, then finally automatically extended untill Alice’s legal age of majority. A very supportive and helpful social worker was assigned to help us all deal with our situation, but there too we had to get the support renewed periodically and the whole system (counseling and social benefits) only lasted untill Alice’s eigtheenth birthday.
On that date, very suddenly, support stopped when she became, socially, supposedly a full adult.
She wasn’t on her own, not in real life, she was still in highschool and I was considering her like my « other daughters », so we were making plans for her university studies, with or without social benefits or counseling, that didn’t matter …
But actually it did : it just wasn’t possible for her to feel internally reassured enough, financially and psychologically, about the situation.
She filed a request for an extension of social support but got no answer at all …
Just silence.
Which felt like abandon.
That, I think, is part of the picture opening the door for the kind of support she got into on the web just around then …
During the past eight years that Alice had been – at that time – spending with me, it of course hadn’t been a bed of roses, when it came to establishing a sense of stability for her ….
Both of her parents were at times pretty unpredictable. Her mother was having a very hard time accepting the fact of not being able to mind for her daughter. There was a lot of tentative undermining and jealousy we had to deal with. She would have trouble « giving Alice back », so to say, after Christmas vacation or such … But then also she, herself, would disappear for months at a time and then reappear just as suddenly…
Alice’s father too was having trouble dealing with his issues, addiction mainly, and he could at times have unpredictable and agressive – scarey – attitudes.
Visiting either one of her parents just wasn’t peaceful
So, you see, it was really hard for her to settle down and « enjoy » I would say…
But we tried. I took the idea of representing stability very seriously.
Understandably Alice wasn’t finding it very easy to make nice reliable easygoing durable friendships. She would tend to be attracted to teens with problems such as autism, eating disorders or whatnot. But they were friends anyway. And suprisingly (with all those worries she had to deal with) she did manage to do well academically and was very appreciated by adults, teachers in particular.
When she was thirteen with one of her school friends, her « best friend » at the time, she began getting in contact on the web with some grown men, flirting and provoking and, I think, as for her, dreaming of love …
The conversations she was having were very explicit and hard-core, nude photographs were being exchanged, but with a little romanticism mixed in too, probably calculated as part of, coming from the men, a typical pedophile lure … Whereas her friend seemed to know better than her where to stop, not going so far as to meeting these men in real life, Alice just plunged in.
When I found out about one man in particular who had persuaded her to spend a night with him in a hotel (supposedly, she was spending the night at a friend’s house), I filed a complaint.
The complaint was shelved at first because of « insufficient evidence » so I investigated the possibility of an appeal or at least seeking some counseling with an association defending victims of sexual abuse.
But as the initial police investigation had been traumatising for Alice (blunt questioning to see if she was or wasn’t telling the truth, and to evaluate her psychological profile plus a no-nonsence style of medical examination – sadly enough, her first contact with a gynocologist…), it seemed at the time that it would have brought on more trauma than repair.
Of course, now I wonder if maybe I should have gone on with the appeal, even though Alice seemed so opposed to the idea at the time…
Who knows ?
But Alice did get support from the child psychologist she was seeing at that time and who she kept on seeing until the age of 18.
I’m giving these details about Alice’s background just to show how much evidence of trauma there is in her story, for anyone who knows her as well as I, or as her child psychologist did.
But isn’t it strange to observe that the person who signed the certificat allowing her to take testosterone, after hearing the story Alice chose to tell, did so after just a few months of counseling. It went just like GuessimAfab said it went for her « I just needed to convince him that I fit the role of someone who needed testosterone. I’d already mostly convinced myself, and I’ve always been a great actor, (theater kid, remember ?) »…
Well, yes ; Alice was a theater-kid too …
Alice had stopped seeing her child psychologist after telling her about her idea – which had never come up before – that she was « really » a boy.
Her child psychologist apparently reacted – at least if I am to believe the way Alice related the story – in a «snap-out-of-it » way which didn’t work out at all.
I must admit that I too, reacted in the same « oh-come-on ! » way… which I, of course, regret now. But at the time the idea seemed so ungrounded. And as I said, I was so aware of Alice’s traumatic background and of the fact that this had never been the issue before …
One of Alice’s friends at the time was , it just so happens, openly questionning her gender-identity. That could have been part of what initially gave Alice the idea of looking into things through the transgender-trend prism for her own discomfort. Or maybe the trend was just already so much in the air …
I’m worried too because there is also a medical issue for Alice, who has a slight heart condition which it seems to me would be a contra-indication for administration of testosterone.
But it didn’t seem to be an issue since she was able to start testosterone very quickly.
How weird …I had always had such faith untill then with doctoring and the « at least do no harm » oath …
So, now she’s been on T for two years and has had double masectomy last year.
When beginning testosterone, she left home for about 5 months, joining an association, very well-known over here in France, for homosexuals and trans-people rejected by their families. At the time, I think she was saying I had kicked her out. In reality we were having serious disagreements about the rapid decision to take hormones instead of exploring other ways of dealing with the discomfort Alice was experiencing.
Apparently the time spent with the LGBT association was a rather difficult experience.
I don’t know much about exactly how things went on there but she did tell me she met some pretty toxic people, got robbed of her savings, felt suicidal and dissociated during that period. Apparently she got sent to a clinic specialized in gender issues for a few weeks and the way she was feeling was explained to her through the trans-prism. It seems the reason she may have felt something wasn’t totally OK with the way things were being dealt with, was the fact that they were discouraging her from visiting her grandmother who was having important medical issues at the time. That was probably what partially snapped her out of full adherence to the narrative she was being fed.
So since then she’s been back living with me, but in a way rather « next » to me, like a sort of joint tenant.
By that I mean something is definately not quite the same. There are things we can’t really share. A sort of uneasiness between us.
Outside of home, she’s living socially as « he » under the name of Peter. I’m using Peter which of course is not the name she is, in real life, using, because what I see is someone not wanting to grow up, like Peter Pan, although in this case, she seems to think it’s the only way she could find to grow up precisely, while at the same time, escape growing up to be a woman…
Well, as a woman, it pains me to see a young girl not wanting to be a woman and, ironically, having such a gender-conforming vision of womanhood in the first place.
And I am worried about her health, her heart condition under testoserone, I really am.
And I do admit she seems more socially at ease when people relate to her as a young man, a young gay man actually since she is attracted to men.
But I myself, can’t think of her as male, as he, as Peter. To me she seems right now like a slightly hairy, deep-voiced, flat chested, gender-questionning young woman, that’s what I see at this point, I can’t seem to see anything else.
But sometimes I don’t know why I’m so attached to maintaining « she » and « Alice ».
Other people, especially the younger generation, cousins and whatnot, seem to be able to not really believe in her trans-narrative but to not find it too difficult to switch to calling her Peter.
For her confort.
To convey the message « be who you wish, we still love you ».
That sounds nice, supportive. But I can’t seem to do it and I’m wondering why.
It seems to me I must continue to remain the stable one. The one who says « yes I see there are things that are hard to deal with for you, but that’s still what you have to deal with. Denying it, sweeping things under the rug, won’t make them disappear.». And also, « I’m here » « You can count on me » and at the same time, « I believe in you », « You can do it ». Things like that…
Who knows ?
That might not be the right attitude. Or I might not be doing it the right way. Or maybe since she’s 21, I should just let go. I’m really not sure, I simply note that that’s what I’m doing these days.
And it feels kind of lonely.
We had a conversation, Alice and I, recently, about me calling her Alice and her discomfort about that.
I told her I found it important to be able to accept where you come from, your own story. And your given name, a name that your parents gave you at birth, is part of acknowledging that. You can’t really erase your heritage. You’ve got to integrate it, make it yours, do something with it….At least that’s how I feel about it.
If Peter was a nickname, why not ? But if there is any confusion about biology, which there seems to be, I don’t feel at ease being part of it.
I said I wanted her to feel free to be able to « come back », if someday she felt like she may have gone up the wrong trail (or down the wrong rabbit hole!) and that maybe that « coming back » would feel lonely and difficult with all of the group-thought LGBT pressure going on these days.
And the « new life » she is trying so hard to consolidate.
She still prefers to be called « Peter » and « he » and I still am calling her « Alice » and « she ».
Since that conversation she has been sharing more and more with me.
It’s strange. I don’t know.
So.
Just felt like sharing our story with you.
Maybe someone’s going through similar questionning….
Is there a contact option somewhere that I’m not finding? I wanted to share some information about am organization that I though would be helpful.
Gccan.org
I was wondering if you’ve seen the recent Atlantic cover story on the relationship between childhood anxiety and parental accommodation. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/
It seems relevant here because a lot of children who are demanding puberty blockers seem to be doing so out of a fear of puberty rather than a gender issue. Just thought it might be something you’d like to talk about.
https://sites.google.com/georgetown.edu/pharmedout/resources/pharma-free-advocacy-groups?authuser=0
List of advocacy groups that do not accept pharma funding. You should be on here…. If they refuse, broadcast that.
I have visited this web site several times over the past few years for comfort and courage in a situation which often feels very lonely and in which I often questioned if what I was doing was right for my child. Socially liberal parent here who thinks adults have a right to live their lives the way they choose, as long as they don’t interfere with other people’s right to do the same, and I wish all people well in exploring who they are, who they want to be and hope we all find as much happiness as we can in life.
After 4-5 difficult years, years that were no doubt more difficult for my child than anyone else, I am happy to report that my child is more and more embracing the gender assigned at birth. I am happy about this because for many years my child was in a dark place, a place of deep depression and uncomfort – probably not a word, but describes the situation well, and actually describes all teenagers pretty well. My child seemed unreachable and very unhappy and there was distance between us. The love was there on both sides, always, but we were far apart in our views of what would help alleviate my child’s unhappiness and what was the right path forward.
I felt compelled to post here as I know many who visit this page feel like this and I wanted to say have courage and be kind. I don’t know that any advise is that useful because every person and every family’s situation is so different, but I know I was always looking for it when I came here. So, some things that may have helped, and probably at base help every parent of any teenager: say I love you often, so often that your teen gets annoyed by it, say it in a way that is easy and comfortable for you, say it when you drop your child off at the bus stop or school, say it when you drop your child off at a friends house, say it in a routine, ordinary way that lets them know that is the baseline Because it is, and teenagers often don’t feel it unless they hear it often. No child makes these kind of choices if they are not deeply unhappy with the way things are; having a parent you know loves you no matter what may help at least a little bit. Your teen will not seem to appreciate this, and don’t expect to get anything back, because that is not the way many teenager’s minds work.
Reinforce with your child that you want him/her/they to find the happiest life they can as an adult. Tell them that your job as a parent is to be the safety bar in the roller-coaster of teenage years, and that you aren’t doing your job as a parent if you don’t try to keep them as safe and healthy as possible for as long as possible, even up their late 20s when their brain stops growing and changing rapidly and their decision-making skills stabilize Take them to a counselor if they want to see a counselor and tell them you support them in continuing to see a counselor as long as it is helpful. If payment is an issue, tap into school counselors or free community counseling – call your local health department for assistance. Make sure the counselor you take them to respects you as the Medical decision-maker for your child, because that is what you are until they are 18. Most counselors are trained to work in family systems and respect that fact that parent’s are the leaders in the family and want the family to get along as well as possible and avoid conflict or work conflicts out as best they can. Try to stay as close to your child as possible, appreciate the things he or she is into and listen to him or her talk about them. You are not a teenager so it might not all be your thing, but this is your child and he or she needs an attentive parent, it is our job to stay involved in our teenagers lives.
Take this situation seriously, but not personally. I wanted to, as much as possible, support my child at what will probably be the most difficult time in life. It was a hard time for me, but if you are wrapped up in blaming yourself or or let your own feelings of loss and sadness take you over, you cannot be strong when your child needs you the most. Finally, as my child grew up, I knew the time was coming when my child would be able to make more social and medical decisions, and I tried to work toward understanding that my child would find a way to be happy and it would be my child’s choice. As this child’s parent, the truth is that is all I want for my child. But I have to say, the fact that my child was so unhappy was an important clue in me thinking it was not the right path and having the courage to resist. Finally, I wanted to say the the Pique Resilience Project is doing such important work. Our children need people their age or close to their age to help them through this process, to be role models in accepting yourself while not judging others.
I fully support trans people in finding their rightful place in the world and finding happiness and success. As a parent, I understood that my child might find the happiest, most successful place as in the world a trans person. But my parental instincts were telling me that might not be the case. The world we live in is telling me to ignore those instincts, and that I was a bad parent and holding my child back from happiness. So, I want to say again, “Be kind and have courage.” All through these past few years, I was looking for hope, I didn’t know how things would turn out. But I had to do what I thought was right at each point in time, what I thought protected my child best. I told myself and even my child that if I turned out to be wrong, I would have to ask for forgiveness and we would always move forward as a family. One other thing I wanted to say is that I understand we have to make lots of decisions like do I call my child by a preferred name, do I allow binding, medical procedures, hair cuts, hair extensions, makeup, all kind of decisions. As a parent, I tried to make each of these decisions carefully and always trying to trust my instinct about what was best for my child in the long run. I don’t necessarily think there are any “right” decisions to be made, we all just do the best we can at each point in time. And sometimes you get information that makes it necessary for you to make a decision you don’t feel that comfortable with. Keep moving forward and helping your child in the best way you can-do what you can, with the tools that you have available to you and make sure your child knows you love them no matter what happens…because you do.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this comment. It really shows the Middle Way parents can take: Not giving up their own instincts and perceptions, but all the while remembering that their connection with their child is unshakeable but must be cultivated, no matter what happens.
I’m looking for resources, video preferably, for my 13 year old daughter who suddenly thinks she’s trans. I tried to explain gender dysphasia is a normal and common part of puberty but she doesn’t believe me. Please share your best resources!
Support message board for parents: https://gendercriticalresources.com/Support/
The NYT today ran this piece by a “non-binary” woman on testosterone treatment. Your comments would be welcome:
“Notes From One Year on Testosterone”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/18/opinion/testosterone-therapy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
My observation: yet another puff piece promoting the so-called “trans” movement. The comments, with a few exceptions, are supportive. Those that aren’t politely refer readers to NIH and other highly respected entities that provide data on the serious dangers of elective testosterone treatments. One commenter cited data from the E. German program that gave testosterone to young female athletes, resulting in higher incidence of cancer, thyroid irregularities, liver disease, heart disease, miscarriages, etc.
Note: With my wife’s active support (and my adamant opposition) our daughter is undergoing these treatments. Her dysphoria is accompanied by depression, autism, ADD and borderline personality disorder. I expect a very bad outcome long term.
J,
What you quoted from the article, about the East Germans, was more or less well known during the 70’s, when for some reason….their female athletes, would have ‘out of the world’ stats [in and outside of Olympic competition], but were never heard from again. Of course, during the Winter and Summer games, announcers from western channels, came about as close as they legally could, to calling into question the methodology [although the folks at ‘Sports Illustrated’ on occasion, would darkly hint at this].
By the way, I am sure you know….like everyone else here that the HRT cocktail, be it estrogen or testosterone based, when given to youth, have multiple, long term side effects. Not many of which, are easily remedied [and to think, one can find this, just by looking up in the PDR].
I am not sure if this is where I can write my thoughts so apologize if this should be somewhere else. I have a very long and bazaar story which I will present just a piece of here. My daughter at 26 decided out of the blue she is trans, started testosterone and is looking to get top surgery. This seems ok because of the age BUT. She is living isolated from friends and family because of Covid 19 (they moved out of state so she could go to grad school). Her husband is a master manipulator and he decided he was bisexual last year. I think because of the husband and isolation she found solace in the community of the trans world. She has now completely cut off all of her family. This is not normal for her and really isn’t normal for any 26 year old. We can’t go see her because it would require flying and that isn’t a safe option right now. We can do nothing and feel totally helpless. Oh and she has never presented as anything other than female until now. I wonder if the Covid issue will make things worse for girls and/or women already feeling lonely or alone?
Annette, I’m so sorry to hear about your daughter. Plenty of people compare the current trans craze to a cult, and in fact cult expert Steve Hassan recently spoke out, stating that he sees the similarities, as well.
Consider joining the support forum set up for parents who are dealing with kids who suddenly saying they are trans. Unfortunately you’ll find there are no easy answers but on the forum you’ll also find plenty of good advice and solidarity. You are not alone.
https://gendercriticalresources.com/Support/
Recently my son ‘came out’ to me. He said he thought he might be a different gender or something (he wasn’t really sure what it was…but he was somewhat sure he wasn’t straight…or so he thought). I could tell he was confused and questioning, and he was also immersed in YouTube videos and has a friend who recently identified as agender or nonbinary (they’re still figuring it out, too).
I was grateful for the posts and discussions here that helped me talk with my child in a way that valued his feelings as well as offered a wider lens to the discussion. I was able to talk to him about these feelings, acknowledging them *and* also providing him with more perspectives and language to be more informed about gender/body dysmorphia feelings.
A few days later, he said he wanted to get a Pride flag for Pride month…so, we head to the website that sells all kinds of Pride flags, and we’re looking at all the different ones, and we’re talking about what all the different colors refer to and what they mean. And then we get to the Straight Ally one. And that’s the one he says he wants. He tells me he knows he’s a straight white male (he definitely felt shame about that), and he wants to support his LGBTQ friends. He thinks the LGBTQ community is a wonderful, welcoming place with lots of folks just like him who never felt like they fit in anywhere else.
Howdy, since I didn’t see a specific way to contact you, I just wanted to drop you a note to say that if there’s ever a push to ‘cancel’ you and Bluehost chooses to close down your site OR if they just can’t handle some of the attacks you probably get to knock the site offline, I’d be happy to host your site – for free.
I run one of the largest boutique web hosting services and probably a quarter of the top mom/family blog sites.
My daughter just discovered ROGD during Covid lockdown and way too many hours on YouTube and Discord, so I want to make sure that groups that helps parents and detrans voices don’t get squashed.
We’re 3 weeks into this reality right now, and found a counselor who we trust isn’t going to push T.
Have a lovely weekend.
-J
Desperately seeking therapist in SF Bay area that will provide balanced counsel to my 17 year old daughter that seems exhibits classic behaviors of ROGD teen. i’ve been combing through 4thwavenow and other sites but none provide therapist recommendations.
Hi everyone. I just found this site today. I am beyond devastated and can’t write much right now. My young adult child (born female, but who came out as trans a few years ago), started HRT and was on it for a while, and also had top surgery recently. Now realizes that this was a mistake. All of that was available without any gender counselling nor any type of mental health counselling despite an earlier diagnosis of ADHD and many years of severe anxiety and depression. Going through a lot of the posts on this site, we share a lot of the same circumstances: social isolation, depression and anxiety, feelings of self-hatred and body dysmorphia, lots of time on social media being influenced by communities with an agenda (why is this agenda at the expense of hurting so many vulnerable youth??). As a mother I truly don’t know what I could have done differently, and whether the outcome would have been better. I think it could have gone either way. If I had tried to stop the treatment or not been supportive, my child may have been pushed even further down the transition path, given how absolutely determined (and that is putting it mildly) she was. Most infuriating was how easy it was to get prescription for hormones, and to get accepted for government funding for the surgery. How many more youth will be hurt like this before we realize the pendulum has swung way too far? Thank you all for giving me a safe place to share and for helping me to not feel alone in my pain.
I’m so sorry. I’m a transman, 47 & i wanted to let you know alot of the older trans are appalled and trying to stop children from medical transition, its no place for a child.
Im forming a org of trans adults like myself to take of the medical indusrry and Im sorry, this is about money and its horrible. I’m sorry we didn’t form fast enough, we are trying and you are not alone.
Scott
Thank you, Scott, it’s so good to hear this and your efforts mean a lot. Perhaps people will listen to you and your group, especially since it’s clear you have no hidden agenda or bigotry.
There is a lot of money in this, but I hadn’t thought that people could be so hard-hearted as to ruin lives for it. I suppose there is a minority of people who will do anything for money.
The private doctor who sent testosterone to my daughter, Helen Webberley, was banned from practising in the UK and so went abroad and coninues to provde her ‘services’, providing herself with a huge income. I had assumed she misguidedly felt she was doing the right thing but I am now disillusioned. Without her greed, perhaps my daughter would not now be coping with the lasting effects of testosterone having been swept along into transitioning and finally having ‘detransitioned’.
I wish you all the very best.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/julianvigo/2018/12/27/pseudo-scientific-hokum-and-the-experimentation-on-childrens-bodies/
Thank you Scott! Please let us know how we can follow your org!
Hello, I have experienced so much grief and heartache over this issue. My young adult daughter suddenly came out as trans male after no signs or evidence of gender identity issues or problems throughout her childhood and adolescence. At the time of coming out she rejected me and will have nothing to do with me despite reaching out to her over the years. However, she documents her journey and changes on social media. Having recently read a lot about the idea of social contagion in rapid onset gender dyphoria and including stories and videos by detransitioners I am severely concerned. My daughter has several chronic illnesses including an immune deficiency disorder, fibromyalgia and has had periods of alienation and suffers from depression, I fear these processes will exacerbate her distress. I don’t see any improvement in her overall health both physical and mental in fact there appears to be a marked decline in her well being.
I hear you and it’s like hearing a multitude of stories extremely similar; including my daughter’s.
She’s been transitioning for about 5 years but I’ve never lost hope and as of right now, she’s been starting to be way less reactive when I “misgender” her and I feel the older she gets the more mature and at the same time accepts other opinions.
Anyways, she’s still struggling and just like you said, their mental and physical issues don’t seem to improve even when they have reassured that the transition will help.
I wish your daughter realizes that transitioning it’s not the way to improve and my heart is going to you since I know all the suffering you’re going through.
I believe totally in God’s Will and in His mysterious ways to bring us peace in the end.
Keep in touch with your daughter, NO MATTER WHAT, because like I said to my daughter, nobody (“doctors, therapists, friends”) really cares about you but the people that genuinely loves you. As mothers and fathers we’ll ALWAYS be with them.
We are having the same experience. Our daughter has cut us off completely. My husband tried to see her a few weeks ago. He actually did fly thousands of miles only to have her refuse to answer the door and then she left town. She is supposed to be in graduate school but I think she has dropped out. Now she will have tons of student loan debt and nothing to show for it. We are heart broken and I think about her all day every day. I have become almost non functional.
You are probably feeling like many parents – “What if I had done this – or that – and wondering what you could do now?” The answer is: probably nothing. My daughter, too, exhibited no gender questioning until her early 20’s. By the time I learned of it, she had already had top surgery and while I thought she was in graduate school, she was actually undergoing hormone therapy. Nothing prepares a parent for the photograph of a completely unrecognizable person, formerly a daughter. The real tragedy is that I would have been very supportive of her decision if I had known about it and that it was undertaken with all seriousness and without outside influence. There. is. nothing. you. can. do. I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked, “What are you going to do?” Well, kidnapping is illegal and short of flying thousands of miles only to be arrested for trespassing (her brother already tried to visit her). Realizing that you cannot stop worrying, what you can do is stop feeling guilty or that there is something you can do to change the situation.
The central problem on transgender is that the entire infosphere is dominated by the trans activists. So, our kids are inundated with their propaganda online, the media is cowed to buy onto it, schools too, and counseling is overwhelmingly in sync with the activists. Solid experts like Dr. Paul McHugh and others who urge alternative counseling to help dysphoric children to come to terms with their birth gender are hounded out and attacked as bigots.
Our daughter, who suffers from multiple mental disorders, fell into the activists’ party line early on and has been inside an echo chamber bubble for years. And, of course, no alternate views or counseling are tolerated at college. Her “therapist” guided her further down this road to the point of our daughter ending almost all communications with us, her parents. Now she’s into hormone treatment by a “transgender clinic” in the midwest. Next up will be deforming surgery.
As drwo states, we parents are rendered helpless. I feel like I’m living in a one-party dictatorship.
There is an excellent book called Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger in which she tells of her experience when challenging or even questioning the activist transgender lobby. Threats, harassment, hate mail, etc. Ms. Dreger is a bioethicist and she was unable to find any inclination on the part of transgender activists to find common ground. Nothing other than total capitulation on her part was acceptable. One common theme stands out from stories on this site and other sources of information and that is the almost universal attitude on the part of the child that anything other than instant acceptance and complete adherence to the new “rules” is met with aggression. If one forgets at any point to use the new preferred pronoun, there is no understanding about the difficulty this presents for the parent who is faced with the sudden appearance of a fraternal twin – but not. All evidence that the child existed pre-transition must be erased. Period. Any slip-up is grounds for punishment or even banishment. Case closed. When a child has the “I’m gay” discussion with a family member, the family member may take some time adjusting but in essence the person is the same person, gay or not, and often the parent or other family member may already know anyway and there is relief on everyone’s part to have the situation clarified. There may be families where the child and parents discuss transition in advance but it appears that the older the child is when the transgender issue becomes known to the parents, the more hostile and closed the child is. And, of course, the child has already formed a support network where the situation is clear: The child is within his or her rights to be demanding and evangelical and the parent is not entitled to answers to questions or even to any degree of parental respect. “Here I am. The last time you saw me I was a girl, but now I’m a man. Deal with it. Period.”
My 17 year old granddaughter declared herself trans six years ago. My daughter has been supportive, but my granddaughter has cut off communication with my daughter after several months of treating her mother with unbelievable verbal cruelty. I once read an article (I thought it was on 4th wave) that detailed a list of words, phrases, and techniques trans teens use to guilt and manipulate parents. It would be so helpful to my daughter to have access to this, but I can’t find it. If anyone knows of it, and where I can locate it, please share! My daughter is beyond devastated.
Hi, I come across with your blog, sadly enough I’m to familiar with some of the topics of it, as I endure malpractice and a painful reconstructive journey.
I am very familiar with the doctor you mentioned; Crane, Garcia, Bowers.
Thank you for sharing this information regarding transgender Surgical procedures and the reality of it when the gender fairy fails at it.
A. Xoxo
I know my way around HTML and I could clean up your “resources” and “research” pages, if you’d like— make them neatly formatted and all that. If you’re interested, email me, I’m happy to help.
Hey! I’ve noticed that Mozilla are running a campaign for people to report youtube videos that they think sent them (or family) down dangerous rabbitholes. I’m personally not keen on the entire endeavour, since it seems like overreach, but personal feelings aside, I think their results will be skewed because they’re only advertising to their subscribers (you can see the current bias in their list of stories). https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/youtube-regrets/ and https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/regrets-reporter/ . But this seems potentially very interesting to parents; over and over again people talk about the effects of social media putting kids on this track. I don’t know where best to let parents know about it, so am linking it here in the hopes that others can see it and pass it on to anyone interested.
Hello, how do I stop being transgender (ftm) ?
I am not attracted to women (but to men), my body is fine, I’ve never had any sexual expirience with anyone, and I discovered the “trans-internet” after I had identified as trans. Therefor I doubt my trans identidy is a mistaken form of internelized homophobia, body-disfunction, sexual trauma or what I’ve heard is called “rapid onset gender dysphoria”. My trans expirience started mildly at a young age but came more and more evident as I grew older. However, I have come to the realization now that I am not able to be transgender as that is not acceptable. I cannot live my life in social rejection or without a family, and my parents don’t want to lose their daughter (they are not supportive of transgender identifications). Due to this, I have to become a woman. So how do I stop being transgender ? (my age is of majority and have not medically transitioned, by the way.)
I’m just a random person so I really don’t know if you should listen to me. If you’ve thought this through and arrived at the conclusion that you care about something else more than living as a man. I’m in the same situation as you. In an ideal utopia nothing like this world, I would identify as agender. However, this world forces me to choose between such action and societal power/success. I chose the latter. You can’t stop your brain being the way it is. If you can, please tell me how. All you have to do is acknowledge that you made a decision using your powers of reasoning after deliberation and considering your priorities, and you have to be confident in it because you made it for a reason (everyone does what they do for a reason).
I wish to tell my story in the hopes it gives anyone useful information.
My 12 year old daughter, who has always had self-esteem issues, told me she was gender non-binary. I was not expecting that and my reaction was simply to tell her that I loved her no matter what. I spent the following month thinking about it. I collected my thoughts and talked to her again. I restated what she said, that she feels “non-binary”. So, that must mean that I have male feelings. But the only thing male about me is my physical body. I have no internal feelings that are unique to males. They doesn’t exist. I am unique and she is unique, inside and out. As is everyone. If you choose a random man on the other side of the planet, we would only have similarities with our physical body. But, if you choose a woman from our hometown, we would have a lot in common in our minds, way of thinking, culture, and internal feelings. Much more than someone from a small village in Japan. But, what are boy vs girl feelings. I challenged her to ask anyone, what are boy or girls feelings, without talking about the physical body. I also explained that it is typical at her age to not fully love your body. I said that I didn’t love my body at that age, although it was not with my genitalia, but nonetheless. I said that if not having gender specific feelings means that you are non-binary, then I must be non-binary. But, so is everyone on the planet.
The conversation lasted about 15 minutes and her reaction went from curious, to utter disbelief, to calm acceptance. While she still does not love her body like I wish she did, she appears to no longer hold the non-binary thoughts. At least, that is what she is telling me.
The internet has brought some wonderful advantages to humankind. But with it, access to people with dubious intentions and a lot of misinformation. I hope, with time, we can overcome some of these issues.
I pray this information can help someone.
Thank you for posting this. When I think of young children and how to protect them from the misinformation on the internet I sometimes just want to get rid of it all. The reality is it is here to stay so maybe really teaching them to be good critical thinkers. Teach them how to identify bad information and how to tell when someone is trying to push an agenda. Knowledge is power! I really like how you presented this information to your daughter.
I however experienced serious dysphoria since childhood, which I guess developed in my primary school yeats when I was told not to dress and behave too feminine, until I recently stumbled upon the term non-binary. I am 54 now. Overnight my self-consciousness and fear for men disappeared once I accepted the idea. I never had problems with my male body, but did have with the pressure of society to behave in accordance with the genitals I was born with. I now have been presenting without embarrassment as a very feminine man, despite what others may think and say, and have never in my life felt so liberated. I would advise you not to deny your daughter’s feelings. Your approach of indivual identities might be helpfull, but please be aware of the heavy societal pressure on sex-conform behaviour.
Anne
I would never deny my daughter’s feelings. To the contrary, I take them very seriously. I love her and would do anything to ensure her happiness.
I am sorry for you difficult journey. I am not a psychologist, so I can only speak from life experiences. And, I don’t know you, so I won’t presume to give advise to a stranger. I will say this. It is my opinion that all adults should live in a manner that makes them happy. I believe people should dress how they wish, sleep with whoever this wish and doing to themselves whatever they wish. If you’re an adult and want a sex change operation, go for it.
But, children are impressionable and have not developed enough to know who they are. Going back to my daughter. When she first came to me, she was in therapy and taking anti-depressants. She was watching idiots on-line telling how she was supposed to feel. I take partial blame for not monitoring enough. After our talk, she is way happier. She is smiling and laughing more. Her grades in school are much better. She is less anti-social. She is starting to wear clothes that doesn’t hide her body, like before. And I think she will be coming off the medication soon. I have gently asked twice if she still feels non-binary. She has told me both times that she no longer thinks about that.
Societal pressure is nothing new. This trend to normalize gender feelings, or lack thereof, is new and is causing pain in young impressionable and fragile minds. Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with a grown man wearing a dress. There is something wrong with telling a child that they are not a girl because they do not have girl feelings. When someone can articulate to me what a girl or boy feeling is, then we can have a new conversation.
I hope you don’t take my comments as criticism or judgement of you lifestyle. I sincerely pray you find happiness.
~r
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Dear Chiara and Denise,
I am a 54 year old male living in Holland who only recently discovered his/her non-binary gender identity, which resulted in the literally overnight disappearance of dysphoria (uncertainty in social contacts, fear for men). Your approach supports me in my opinion that the idea of medical transition would be much less attractive if society were more acceptable of gender non-conform behaviour and presentation. One of our handicaps is that medical transition has become more or less normalized, whereas a non-binary gender presentation is still magialized. We have to fight that in order to minimize unnesessary medical treatment.
Best, Anne
I, like many I’m sure, have found this site after reading an article in The Atlantic. I am also posting here in desperation one day after learning my 12 year old pre-pubescent daughter feels she is transgender and would be happier as a boy. I am not even sure what my specific ask is other than advice, my wife and I love our children very much and feel very ill equipped to deal with our middle child’s identity crisis.
Even before learning of my daughter’s feelings, I was interested in the societal gender and identity changes that have been so heavily discussed in recent years. I tend to lean towards what I perceived as Dr Edwards-Leeper’s viewpoints in the 2018 article: Many people are truly transgendered and have a right to happiness through any means necessary (if a professional agrees) but also that peers and societal discussions and swings have added a new dynamic to what is a very challenging time for any youth – puberty and coming of age – and that a multitude of mental health and peer pressure variables may lead to confusion in young adults. I’ve felt that as a society we should focus on accepting any behavior coming from any biologic gender, and that if society could do that we could prevent people from feeling the only way they could be who they want to be is through surgical alterations. That may be naive, but it’s how I’ve felt and try to accept any behaviors in others no matter how uncomfortable it may make me feel. But that was before having a child in this situation and the additional awareness that brings.
Our daughter has never expressed that she felt like a boy growing up, her close friends have always been female, was actively interested in boys and interest from boys 1.5+ year ago, 6 months ago stated to us she “likes” both boys and girls in a way that seemed like she felt she was “coming out”, and then in the very recent weeks seems depressed and overly anxious (she does have a history with some manageable anxiety). Yesterday I found personal writings where she stated she felt like a boy, would be happier as a boy, and does not like her body. I believe this was written in the past week or two and in it she states she hasnt told anyone except some online anime fan group. Having just discovered this yesterday we have not talked to her about it yet as we process it and realize how fearful we are of doing or saying the wrong thing. It may be coincidental, but the gender issues over the last 6 months coincide with the fact school went virtual in March 2020 and I allowed all of my kids more computer and online time to help them socialize with friends. I fear I made a horrible mistake and it has contributed to her getting into circles, and online wormholes feeding her information specific to her web searches, that push gender identities as a solution to making an uncomfortable young person feel more accepted or as the only solution to the whole of their mental health or happiness challenges. She did admit to me a few days ago she feels scared to talk to other people, including her friends, in recent weeks and just feels “bad”. In searching her online history she was searching things relating to suicide a couple times over the past week. We did schedule an appointment for tomorrow with a clinician she visited a handful of times 2-3 years ago relating to school test anxiety, which quickly resolved with the counseling.
I love who she is no matter her ultimate decision and gender/sexuality identification. But my gut feeling for my child is she is struggling with finding herself at all, and is depressed and socially anxious, and could benefit from treating those conditions before addressing identity more deeply. Any advice or lessons learned from other parents and those that have been where my daughter is are welcomed. Thank you.
Thank you for your important and courageous work on this issue with and for dysphoric youth and their families.
Hi, I am admittedly behind the curve ball on this subject, but am trying to gain as much ground as possible and as quickly as possible because I believe my daughter’s future depends on it. I am afraid that I may be too late. She lives with her mother, but even though her mother and I are in constant communication, we both are at a loss of what to do. As a child, my daughter showed zero symptoms (I found a test of 8 symptoms in my research that typically 6 should be present in real gender dysphoria) even up to the 7th or 8th grade. She is currently a 10th grader and in the course of a little over a year, she went from saying that she might be bi-sexual (of which her mother and I both told her that we love and accept any decision she would make) to now claiming to be trans, wearing a binder that she received for free behind our backs, and believing that she has always been that way. Anything short of full acceptance and agreement is countered with an extremely volatile reaction and public display on social media of her horrible, toxic parents. We need help and everywhere we turn, the overriding response is affirming the steps she is taking. I believe that there are underlying issues that are not being explored. I am deeply concerned for my daughter and don’t really know what to do.
22 yo daughter has been looking more and more masculine over the past few years. She had a horrible stalking experience in HS by another girl and after that really pulled into herself. ADD and Aspbergers. Her current executive functioning therapist sat us down and announced her pronouns are he and him. We said no. We’ll keep using her name at home. She doesn’t want us to tell anyone for at least two years. She admits she’s not 100% sure this is who she is and is frustrated. I’m torn between trying to get her help or ignoring it for now. One therapist I interviewed said to let her grow up more and sometimes there can be too much therapy. I definitely don’t want someone who will encourage her. Any similar situations or advice?
I cannot believe this evil insidious trend is even happening right now. It’s starting to happen in Canada now under what is called SOGI. I’m rattled and forced to put my kids in religious schools sigh.
(If this is a duplicted post, I a sorry. I could not see it after I posted the first time)
I tumbled onto the USA Today article by Jay Keck and then watched his youtube interview which led me to this site. I have a daughter who is increasingly showing signs of ROGD. She is 18 going onto 19 and in her gap year before college due to COVID. I am very worried about her going to college this fall and want to ask what I can do to prevent her from harming herself as a young adult.
My daughter’s story:
My daughter has OCD when she was a child. This was not surprising as her paternal grandmother is a very anxious person that prohibited her from working outside the home. We did not think it was too big a problem because our son also had OCD (excessive handwashing till bleeding) but grew out of it. When she was little, my daughter would make her bed very pristien as “safety zone”, but refuse to sleep on it. She slept on the floor. When she grew out of that phase, she had am area om her bathroom that she keeps as “NO touch” zone and considered it her “safety”. She gets hysterical if we or the maid service tries to clean them. Anything we touched gets thrown away.
As she grew older and started to enter the adolescent world, her anxiety starts to show, she went from the happy smiley easygoing child to one who is unhappy and abrasive in personality in Freshmen and Sophormore of High school. She still corporated with everything that is expected of her. She excelled academically, so we did not see these as signs of mental problems but thought it was her trying to cope with the busy schedule and pressure of high demanding school. To help her cope with the stress, we sought therapy. As it took a while to find the right therapist, she appeared to figure out how to cope with the stress and became less anxious already as she moves through Junior of High school. What I did not know was that she found another “safety” for her anxiety. She took on Lesbian/bisexual as identity and went out to everyone at her friend circle and school but not us. She dropped the bathroom safety gradually.
Starting her senior year, anxiety got higher with college application seasons. She cut her long hair that she refused to let anyone touch since she was little (not even an inch). She dresses androgenously, complete departure from the extremely girly/fem presentation before. Then Covid happened. She could not physically attend the extremely prestigeous and ridiculously expansive university she got into. So, we adviced her to take a gap year. I now felt that it was a big mistake. The gap year has made her anxiety go to extreme, compounded with online interaction is the main socialization. She finally came out to us that she is Lesbian towards the end of last year, half way through her Covid lack-of-social contact. We had difficulty with it of course. This led to more anxiety in her. She then went all the way with her androgeny, throwing away her girly cloth, wearing men’s underwear, using sports bra for binding. She is also asking her friends to refer to her as he/she/they as gender is not real. She is happy to be identified as male but does not yet reject female.
My evaluation on this: Everytime she is stressed, she finds a “safety area” to cope with it. When she was little, it was OCD. Facing the anxiety of adolescent, she took on Lesbian. Not that she cannot be lesbian, but I felt this not only gave her a socially accepted way to cope with the adolescent anxiety, it also provides some relief when she releases her anxiety with controllable sexual interaction. The feeling of losing control frightens her and made her nauseous, not the male body. When further stressed because of conflict with us at her coming out, she moves to transgender.
I talked to her therapist who is not an extremist. Even that, she does not see that the two are related and advice me that it is just adolescent and it is just a waiting game. When it is not your daughter, it is easy to talk about it as a waiting game. It is very hard to take it and watch her destroy her life that she put so much effort to make so far. She excelled academically, is an extremely attractive girl (if she does not purposefully dress and act as a boy). She is well supported financially, no trauma in her life beside that we did believe in spanking when they were little (but did not use it too much). She has a bright future in front of her if she can just deal with he Anxiety healthily. Unfortunately, However, instead of helping patients like her, the transgender media/society is eager to lock her in her anxiety ridden box to achieve their agenda. If the underlying Anxiety problem is not dealt with, I felt that all these lesbian and trangenderism will destroy her life.
I teach Endocrinology to professional students who will go on to become healthcare workers. The connection between endocrine disorder, anxiety and sex hormone is very strong. However, the society refuses to make that connect with gender dysphoria and we are not allowed to put a light on it. Providing any alternative theory to the doctrine risks one for being canceled. Given this society pressure, the thought that she might go on hormone which will not only further harm her anxiety/mental/social health but also led to a lifelong physical suffering is unberable.
Thank you. I have felt so alone!
I would like to share some important resources with this community. What is the best way to do that?
The main challenge in the current gender transition discourse is that those who are treating kids and teens are just not operating from a position of complexity. Everything is split along trans/good:cis/bad. And parents who want to support their kids in a process of deeper exploration before committing to lifelong, irreversible physical alteration are discredited as transphobic. I’ve started reading Dr. Sahar Sadjidi’s work based on her own ethnographic research at gender identity clinics. It has been eye opening for me and has convinced me even more that the “specialists” are not thinking as deeply as they should be. In the end, we all want our kids to live happy, healthy, well adjusted lives and if gender transition is part of that, then most of us would support it. But the clinical and medical discourse has to be willing to accommodate a greater degree of complexity.
I really hope we can start publicly normalizing the feelings of wanting to be the opposite sex. My male child “pretended” to be a girl 24/7 for about 4 years, ages 2 to 6. When it became evident to me that he was feeling shamefull and abnormal because of this, I casually said, “its nothing to be ashamed of, it’s totally normal to be curious of and deeply want or wish to be the opposite sex. I spent my tween and early teen years wanting to be a boy, wearing boy clothes, angry anytime someone suggested I do something because ‘that’s what girls’ do.” When I told him most people feel this way at some point, it is just not talked about much, it was like the weight of the world was lifted off his shoulders. He realized he was not a freak and no longer needed to figure out how to not be a freak anymore. Please tell kids, ALL kids, that strong feelings about wishing you were the opposite gender happens to everyone at some point in our lives!! Why are people so hesitant to admit this? I truly believe that one confession from me, changed the course of my son’s future. He may still become Trans as he continues to explore those feelings, but at least it will be because he figures out who he really is and not because it’s the only way to eliminate his “abnormal” feelings. There’s a big difference!!
Excellent comment. Thank you. We’ve shared it on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/4th_WaveNow/status/1397602064360955906?s=20
Hello to all of you and thanks for having this forum where parents concern about their child’s future can express and look for information. Transgender, is not about an instant fix. It’s much more complex… I question if this is a matter of not having the capacity of accepting who we are. Of course, people with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, is a whole differed story. I understand medicine has evolved, we have accomplished wonderful things, some of those are clinically indicated others, such as esthetic surgery, we could live without. Gender affirmative treatment leaves permanent changes, not to mention we do not know the long term heath implications (remember when everybody used to smoke? It causes a wide range of malignancies). For us parents making decisions that will affect our children’s future, is irresponsible. They should be loved, supported and be thought our values. So when the achieved adulthood they have the tools to make informed decisions by their own.
OMG — I am SO glad I stumbled across this site! As a fellow left-leaning liberal, I’m appalled by most of the sites that speak against the “trans trend,” as their far-right agenda is against pretty much everything I support.
I’m happy to see that there are other rational people who can be liberal and support progressive causes, while simultaneously be opposed to the automatic “gender-affirming” care that’s being pushed on so many of our youngsters.
My goodness; this is an incredible resource. I’m a high school teacher who has been quietly but steadily trying to support students and families in my school community. I worry that many professionals who work with children leap to blanket acceptance of children being transgender as they are trying to establish their identities in the midst of a naturally dynamic life phase. I will be reading the links and comments with great interest — you have a wealth of research and perspectives. Wishing all the best to everyone here —and to those you love.
Thank you for your kind comments.