This is a comment submitted to my blog this morning on my post discussing my daughter’s desistance from her prior trans identification:
I’m forty. I came out to my parents at nineteen, from an Ivy League school. They took the same hard line you did. Now I’m a happy guy, on T, having shoveled off those gross chest tumors and gotten rid of the disgusting babymaking internals. The rape gash is no more; I happily penetrate my feminine, gay-leaning bi boyfriend of seven years with the genital I should have had at birth. And my parents? I haven’t spoken to them in years, and I couldn’t care less. Do you want your kid to feel like me? All because you want them to accept something that makes them miserable? If you really are a radfem, you should accept reality: celebrating female biology is like celebrating cancer. Read Firestone and Dworkin.
Regular readers know I don’t generally provide a platform for hateful and abusive argument in my comment sections. But on occasion, I do believe it’s instructive to highlight the self-hatred and vitriol that some people feel compelled to hurl at parents like me; parents who question whether the “community” their kids are thinking of joining is actually a healthy neighborhood.
- Does this “happy guy” think this spittle-flecked rant makes a parent like me feel guilty for wanting to protect my daughter from falling into a cesspit like this?
- Do gender therapists have any idea they enable a person like this to “transition” to a “man” who hates women to this extent?
- What happened to this woman that would make her detest herself so much that she would not only label her own amputated and re-purposed body parts as a “rape gash” and “chest tumors,” but also feel compelled to send filth like this to the parent of a teenager who actually decided on her own not to continue down the path of self-loathing?
- Why would a stranger, reading about a teen girl who has begun to accept her whole self, become filled with such venom?
- Why wouldn’t someone who actually cares about “trans” people celebrate a teenager who won’t have to endure years of injections and surgeries? It would be like a cancer patient becoming enraged when another patient goes into remission.
- What makes a stranger think that a mother who refuses to march in lockstep with the propaganda spewed by a close-minded cult is equivalent to somehow forcing her child to change?
- Is not speaking to one’s parents for decades and feeling indifferent about that supposed to be some indicator of mental health and a fulfilling life?
- Is mentioning they came from an “Ivy League school” supposed to somehow rationalize the crude and offensive words they want to assault me with?
- And a bit of irony: Telling me to go read books by feminist authors who pointed out the exact same extreme misogyny this “man” is spouting is proof of—what? Certainly not that celebrating female biology is “cancer.” What it is, is proof that the depth of self hatred women like this commenter experience, their extreme dysphoria, ought to merit serious attention from a psychologist.
- Does anyone reading this honestly think that hormones and surgery were the solution to this person’s troubles?
That a female could dissociate from her own body to the extent of proudly wearing the most hateful misogyny as a badge of honor should cause a lot of soul searching amongst those who purport to care about women with gender dysphoria.
Gender specialists? Are we to understand that hating femaleness to this degree is what constitutes manhood? Or a cure for dysphoria?
Because, trust me: although it is an extreme exemplar, this isn’t the first comment like this I’ve received. And it won’t be the last.