Welcome to the PITT weekly roundup where you’ll find a list of the week’s postings along with links to some of our favorite books, videos, social media, and podcasts. Please continue the fight against the harms of gender ideology by sharing.

Access to all PITT content is free. Our objective is to inform the public of the devastating impact of gender ideology on families through our personal experiences.

Quote of the Week from Swan Interrupted: “Watching your child slowly disappear physically while simultaneously insisting these choices are necessary for survival creates a crushing helplessness.”

PITT POSTS THIS WEEK:

Friday, June 12: Repost: Just Like Other Girls

Thursday, June 11: Did a fender-bender save my daughter from being trans? Part 1

Wednesday, June 10: Cette Montagne Russe Maudiet

Tuesday, June 9: My Experience with a Cryobank

Monday, June 8: Swan Interrupted

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Breaking the Code of Silence on Gender Medicine, by James Meigs for The Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2026

It was obvious that gender transitions for minors were a bad idea. Why did it take so long for medical associations to say so?

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Yes. Just look at those happy losers (i.e. women) who are shielding the man with love.

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Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans: Tales from the Home Front in the Fight to Save Our Kids, a compendium of some of the most compelling essays yet from PITT.

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Have a story to share about gender ideology? Submit to Pitt@genspect.org

This essay was written by a woman who lost her best friend to trans ideology. We make rare exceptions to our policy of publishing only parent and detransitioner pieces and this is one of them, as it is an important reminder of the devastating and personal impact that trans ideology can have on everyone in the trans identifying person’s orbit, including extended family and friends.

I write to you from the lonely generation. A generation that can hardly make eye contact, let alone share their true feelings. A generation conditioned into complacency and silence through years of corporate programming, a toxic food system full of hormone-altering pesticides, and heavy-duty medication. A confused generation, who lack the necessary vocabulary to articulate their lived experiences.  

Mia thought she wasn’t “like other girls”. Mia, in fact, was the quintessential normal human girl, full of personality, complexities, specialness, and specifics, who, like all of us, was thrown into a world that seems to prefer machines, stereotypes, and obedient consumers to actual human beings. Mia struggled with anxiety. She tried to embrace her authentic self outside of the television-based narrative. Mia longed for the people around her to reflect the enthusiasm she had for life. She had friends, hobbies, and a voracious mind that was bored easily by shallow interactions. An old-school feminist, Mia also had what she described as a contentious relationship with her mother, and a competitive relationship with her sibling. Mia was a creative individual who longed for depth in a community otherwise programmed for passivity.  

We were a generation raised by television. We were a generation taught to stay away from drugs, unless it was prescribed, often in the form of Adderall or a novel SSRI. This left many of our counterparts in states ranging from complete apathetic numbness to bouts of mania. Their doctors never seemed to get the dosage right. Social media only added to the mental distress, making it impossible to escape the watchful eye of the social hierarchy. We found solace in our natural emotions; good and bad, useful and frivolous. Neither of us could engage fully with the media stereotypes of womanhood, so we dreamed of greener pastures.  

Trying to Fit In 

Mia was adventurous. She went to a school far away with big dreams, away from her tense family relationships and awkward high school experiences. In college, she met new people, but one friend in particular became her anchor. This new friend, Stacy, became a great influence in Mia’s life. I went to visit Mia, and got a chance to meet Stacy in person.  

Stacy identified as non-binary, she told me. Stacy looked like a regular punk girl, someone “free from the matrix” who didn’t seek male approval for her existence. Hair is just hair, and clothes are just clothes – I assumed she just liked playing with fashion, or that she was recovering from a trauma, or that she was bisexual. I thought non-binary was just another word for fashion-based androgyny. I had no idea it was a political movement, or that it was causing people to conform to gender stereotypes medically or surgically. I didn’t know the corporate media or bad actors were hijacking girls’ online spaces and telling them to hate themselves or their bodies. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. The internet had replaced the personal diary, putting children’s imaginative play into the public interactive sphere. 

The girls were attached at the hip, as girls often do when they move away from home for the first time. Mia told me all about her new life – she had gotten a therapist, who affirmed her sense of confusion in relationship to her family, and had received the ultimate solution to her woes in the form of a pill. She was prescribed an SSRI (Lexapro). Shortly after, she began using online dating apps, and told me her highlights and horror stories. We laughed, we cringed, and all seemed mostly normal. She later talked about Tumblr as another creative outlet she used to express her angst, especially relating to her old relationships. She had left a boyfriend behind in our dusty town before leaving to college. He had displayed acts of aggression against her, which she had not disclosed previously. No wonder she wanted to get away! 

The Algorithm 

We met up half a year later to go on a camping trip. She had cut her hair short, like Stacy’s. It was a good haircut, and I didn’t think much of it. She was wearing punk clothes, like Stacy’s. The whole time we were together, she had her phone out, filming videos or watching them online. There was a screen between us, and she was distant. She asked me to watch one with her; on the other side of that ice-cold glass, that two-way mirror, was an old man, decorated with feminine clothing and glitter. That gaunt figure, a sleuth in girl’s clothes, swung a rainbow boa back and forth, rhythmically serving my friend the impossible promise of a world without pain. I knew social media was full of all kinds of individuals, and didn’t think much of her complete fascination with this attention-seeking influencer.  

Halfway through our holiday, she suddenly called another friend, apparently to announce that she was coming out as non-binary. I wondered if she was exploring her sexuality or fashion, and didn’t know what it meant, but I was her friend, and supported whatever new-fangled fad she was exploring. It was a short trip. We didn’t talk about it. We parted ways. 

What’s A Pronoun? 

I called her half a year later. We didn’t talk much at that point, with both of us being busy for different reasons. She said she wasn’t talking to her family anymore, which was a bit shocking to hear. Wasn’t that a bit drastic? Stacy and Mia were no longer friends – accusations of style-theft broke up the band. She had a new boyfriend, who also identified as non-binary. The relationship was rocky. Her support network had shrunk. She was self-blaming for any abusive behavior she was receiving. I expressed concern. She hung up on me suddenly. I assumed the call had dropped. 

She texted me, telling me I had misgendered her. I was lost for words. What does that mean? She demanded an apology. I didn’t see my offense, and we argued for a bit, talking past each other. Why was she being so volatile? I was completely unaware of the internet culture she had adhered herself to, completely blindsided by the language and terms she was using. These ideas, supposedly grassroots but suspiciously coordinated, seemed to appear in small blogging cloisters where girls gathered to express themselves.  There was no mainstream coverage at that time. I wasn’t online like she was. The conversation became emotional, confusing. We didn’t follow up.  

Vanishing Act 

I know she changed her name. I know she started taking testosterone and sharing updates with online communities about her voice changes. I viewed pieces of her life from those distant vignettes – I was a bystander watching her train leave the station, one little glass window after another. 

I can only hope that she is happy wherever she ended up. I will never know for sure. 

I am left with these questions: 

Why are children medicalized for expressing negative emotions?  

Why is there so much abuse/assault against women in modern relationships?  

How does pornography addiction or exposure, or hyper-sexualization generally, influence the mental health of girls/women, and men/boys? *including art/anime? 

When did we normalize putting children on prescription drugs? 

Is a person under the influence of SSRI’s capable of weighing the emotional impacts of important medical decisions? 

Do we need to take media addiction (TV, phone, etc.) more seriously? 

When did “experts” begin to usurp Parents in family matters? 

Part 1

There were signs from the time my daughter Kristin was very young that she was “gender nonconforming,” to some degree. At the time, I didn’t think in those terms, of course. She was born in 2004, back when being a tomboy was still okay and nobody claimed a little girl playing with cars needed to be medicalized. From as young as three, Kristin had her own style and interests, an odd but amusing mix of “girl stuff” and “boy stuff.” She liked pretty dresses and adored absolutely anything involving horses. But she also hated dolls, loved monster trucks, and, for the better part of a year, wore big black “fireman boots” with everything.

In first grade, she told me all her friends were chasing boys during recess, trying to kiss them. She thought it was “dumb,” but then added, “The only person I want to kiss is Alexis.” This was my first clue she might be gay. When she reached middle school, I wasn’t surprised when Kristin told me she liked girls. And when she started hanging out with a bunch of art and theater kids who proudly wore rainbow badges, I wasn’t worried. Frankly, they seemed pretty harmless compared to my own friend group at that age. We dubbed them the Rainbow Crew, a moniker that felt fun and celebratory at first, but which now makes me cringe.

The Rainbow Crew solidified over the course of middle school. It consisted of two boys, five girls, and Thadeus. Thadeus was born female but identified as male with the full, unwavering support of “his” parents.

Thadeus was one year older than Kristin. I never met Thadeus’ parents, but I learned over the next few years that they were (in my opinion) insanely permissive. At fourteen, Thadeus was allowed to smoke pot on a nightly basis. She was allowed to get multiple tattoos. She attended furry conventions and owned not one but two “fursona” suits. And, of course, she was fully supported in her male trans identity. “He” started hormone therapy sometime in middle school.

I felt all of this was rather too lenient, too reckless, too early, but what alarmed me most was how through all of it, Thadeus became The Hero of the Rainbow Crew. Every kid in the group, my daughter included, thought Thadeus was some kind of role model. All activity revolved around what Thadeus wanted and what Thadeus said. In many ways, it seemed to be a low-key cult of personality.

To be clear, Thadeus wasn’t any kind of Mean Girls Regina-style dictator. I met him a handful of times and he came across as a perfectly polite, slightly nerdy kid. But there was no ignoring the fact that by being trans, Thadeus had somehow achieved the pinnacle of coolness. (Even if the kids don’t say “cool” anymore.)

Through those early years of puberty, my daughter blossomed physically, much to her dismay, into a rather large-busted young woman. This inspired a great many comments from the boys in her class. She asked me to buy her a binder.

I was torn about this. On one hand, I wanted her to love her body, as much as any teen girl can. On the other hand, middle-school kids can be cruel, and she clearly hated people focusing on her chest.

I tried to find the middle ground. I agreed to something that was more of a minimizing sports bra. Nothing could truly hide her breasts, but it made them a bit less obvious, and she seemed happy with that. She floated the idea of getting a breast reduction. I told her we’d discuss when she turned 18, but that no surgeon would ever do a breast reduction on a 13-year-old anyway. (I wasn’t intentionally lying. I honestly didn’t think any surgeon would do such a thing. And frankly, I assumed she’d change her mind by the time she turned 18.) Luckily, she left it that.

What bothered me more than the binder was the way she began to obviously shun everything feminine, even things she’d loved before. Gone were the fun dresses and the wild, multi-color tights. Her glittery pink (faux) Doc Martens and her red cowboy boots stayed hidden in the closet. Her once adored Pink Ladies jacket went unworn. She’d only wear black leggings and oversized, boxy t-shirts. I’d gone through an all-black phase in seventh grade too (trying to be super metal, much to my parents’ dismay), so I told myself it didn’t matter.

But not long after, I found out Kristin went by Kyle among her friends. They also referred to her as “he.” And then came the day I found my daughter dramatically despondent on the couch. (There’s always a level of drama with her. She was a theater kid, after all.) She said to me, “Mom, what if I really am a boy?”

I remember the moment of panic I felt. The feeling that I had to be so, so careful. I said, “Honey, I knew all along you were gay. If you were truly trans too, I would know. Kids who have actual, honest-to-god gender dysphoria show signs from the time they’re three or four. You never did.”

She said she didn’t “feel like” other girls. I emphasized that this was an assumption on her part. There was no way of knowing how other girls felt. She brought up the monster trucks. I countered that sure, she was a bit of a tomboy in some things, but that didn’t make her a boy. I basically kept repeating some version of the lines I’d been saying her whole life: “There’s no one way to be a girl. You can be any kind of girl you want to be.”

I don’t remember much about how the rest of the conversation went, but it ended well enough. She hugged me and agreed that maybe she wasn’t trans. Maybe she was just “non-binary.”

Fine, I thought. Call it what you want. Just don’t ask me to pretend you’re a boy.

Then came high school.

By this point, the rest of the Rainbow Crew had begun following Thadeus’ lead, cycling through the letters of the ever-growing alphabet. One day they’d be asexual, the next they’d be poly. One day they’d be bi, the next day they’d be gay. Without exception, every girl in the group used either he/him or they/them pronouns. They changed their names so often, I had a hard time keeping up with who was who. I once posited to my daughter that there was no way every kid in her friend group could truly suffer from gender dysphoria. That wasn’t statistically possible. My daughter rolled her eyes and said something along the lines of, “You just don’t get it, mom.”

She was right. I didn’t. But there was no ignoring the social aspect of it. The Rainbow Crew were all from white, affluent households. In a world obsessed with grievance politics and intersectionality, alphabet identities gave them social collateral they didn’t otherwise have.

At a parent/teacher conference that year, one of the teachers told us Kristin was more independent and cared a lot less about what her friends thought than most girls her age. I would have felt better about that if I hadn’t known for a fact that she squashed every “girly” part of herself to fit into her friend group. Then the teacher asked me if I knew Kristin went by Kyle at school. I said I knew her friends called her a nickname but didn’t realize it extended beyond that. I didn’t realize teachers were using it as well. I waffled back and forth on how I felt about this, but in the end, decided it wasn’t a hill I was willing to die on.

Then, just a few days after turning sixteen, Thadeus underwent a double mastectomy.

Kristin sent me a text from school that day saying how happy they all were for him. They planned to get a cake for his first day back at school. Kristin asked if I’d take her to the store to order it. (She wasn’t sixteen yet and so couldn’t drive there on her own.) I honestly felt sick to my stomach thinking about the damage done to Thadeus’ body. How could any parent allow such a radical surgery at such a young age? Even more alarming was the fact that his friends were celebrating it, as if removing healthy body parts was a wonderful, normal milestone.

I took her to buy the cake that afternoon, but in the car, I told her I worried about how much they all idolized Thadeus. If Thadeus was really just being “his authentic self,” why did it need to be celebrated so much? I pointed out that Kristin was always her “authentic self” but nobody bought her a cake for it. Exactly one girl in the Rainbow Crew had gone back to identifying as she/her and using her given name. I asked why we weren’t buying a cake for her too, since she’d apparently found her “authentic self” as well.

I don’t know if any of these comments sank in or not. She was clearly annoyed at me. She sulked and rolled her eyes as only a fifteen-year-old girl can. When she pointedly changed the subject, I let the matter drop.

Then Covid happened, her high school years interrupted. She was home with us through the insanity of the 2020. She became both more and less political, finding she disagreed with her friends about JK Rowling, about the protests, about the vaccine. It was the first crack between her and the Rainbow Crew, but at the same time, they were in constant contact via their phones and Discord. Any wrongthink resulted in people being muted or even kicked off the Discord server until they’d properly atoned for their sins. Her friends were still the center of her world, but she learned to keep her opinions to herself.

Her school was fully open again in fall of 2020, when she started her junior year. She talked about whether or not she’d go to prom. If she did, she assured me, we’d have to rent her a tux. She refused to wear a dress of any kind. That broke my heart. I had of course dreamed of taking her shopping, watching her try on all the dresses. I told myself those were my dreams, not hers, and it didn’t really matter. I cried about it, but not in front of her. (In the end, Thadeus didn’t go to prom, and so none of the Rainbow Crew went. We didn’t have to worry about the tux vs. dress issue that year.)

Sometime in early spring of 2021, my husband and I went to an art show she was part of. While there, one of her friends made a point of telling me, “You keep saying ‘she.’ Kyle prefers to go by he/him.” I was a bit taken aback that a high schooler would challenge me on the identity of my own daughter. I said Kristin could do whatever she wanted at school, but I wasn’t going to pretend she was a boy. I could tell the friend found this beyond shocking. More than anything, the friend seemed flabbergasted that a parent might push back.

At that point, I knew the conversation was coming. I knew it was only a matter of time before my daughter brought it up herself.

I still wasn’t ready for it when it happened.

Frickin’ get me off this roller coaster’s big highs and lows.
I’m almost getting whiplash every time it stops and goes.
Every time her mood gets better, mine will quickly follow.
Every time she says dumb crap, my soul in pain will wallow. 
 
“That guy is so dang hot, I think I’d like to marry him…
I believe that prancing ponies will be the next big thing.”
My mental health recuperates right there on the spot,
and hope shoots through my weary veins like COVID-19 shots.
 
But then she says she hates her body, and she hates her hair.
She chops her lovely locks off like my heart’s not even there.
She tries to rewrite history to fit her twisted script.
I feel that, as a parent, I am very ill-equipped.
 
But then she pulls a U-turn, and she turns ‘round on a dime,
and she reminds her mommy that she’s forever mine.
She kisses me and whispers that she loves her dad and me.
I hold her close and tell her that she will always be
 
our baby girl who dances, who loves Pinkie Pie and peach.
I remind her that her childhood dreams aren’t yet out of reach.
I say we’ll always love her, and we surely always will.
But get me off this dumb contraption and its cursed hills!

For more on this author.

About three years ago, I listened to a You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast or I read an article in one of the Genspect publications. I can’t remember exactly which one it was.

However, I do remember clearly the ordeal I learned about. In the podcast or article, a young, distraught man opened up about his very deeply emotional and distressing experience as a trans woman who had detransitioned. He was facing the horrible medical consequences of having gotten sucked into trans ideology when he was young.

His story had such an impact on me that I became very fearful for my 20-something son who was, and still is, lost to me as a trans-woman. Like my son, the young man profiled in the podcast/article had taken estrogen which can permanently destroy a man’s ability to produce sperm.

The young man, as well as my son, had his sperm stored at a cryobank upon taking estrogen.

This young man fell in love with a girl and detransitioned. They married. When he wanted to produce a child naturally with his wife, he went back to the cryobank. He learned that because he had moved around a lot in his youth as a trans woman and did not give the cryobank his updated address changes and because he did not keep up with his payments to the cryobank, they had destroyed his stored sperm. And, tragically, this young man was sterile because he took estrogen. He realized that he absolutely would never be able to create children with his wife.

I knew that my son had stored his sperm, too, because a cryobank sent a bill to our family’s home address in his name. If that bill hadn’t come here about five years ago, I would never have known this.

After hearing this young man’s devastating experience, I called my son’s cryobank. This was about three years ago. I asked them to put me in my son’s account as a contact in case the bill goes unpaid. The cryobank representative refused. I could not ask my son to put my name and contact information in his account because he was not speaking to me. Feeling lost and hopeless, I gave up…until very recently.

About a month ago, I was thinking about how my older son told me recently that my now 31-year old trans-woman son is down and out. He is struggling with jobs, money, and housing.

I decided to push myself again to contact the cryobank in an attempt to find out if my son’s account has been paid. I did call and, most surprisingly, a really nice representative at the cryobank was happy to work with me. In fact, we had a long conversation and she agreed with me that trans ideology is destructive. I learned from her that my son’s account had not been paid in almost a year and a half. She allowed me to pay the balance now and to set up auto-pay for the annual fee of $530. I told her that I will make sure to notify her office anytime my credit card number changes and also if my address changes. I put reminders to myself in my calendar. She then sent me a form to fill out. I dropped the form off personally at the cryobank to make sure it got there safely. My son does not know I did this. The lady told me that if he contacts the Cryobank to pay his bill, he will be told that there is a credit card on file that is paying the bill using auto-pay. And, if he asks, he may be given my name.

I would like to thank the young man who shared his distraught story for helping me. I want to warn anyone about the possibility of this happening to their trans-woman son.

I have confided in you a story that I have told to only a few people on this earth that I trust. I am heartbroken and devastated that my son chose to follow trans ideology. I can hardly believe this is my reality. Trans ideology is insanity.

For years, I mistook charisma for connection.

From the outside, my son’s childhood looked normal. He was part of a pack of boys whose families vacationed together, spent weekends together, and genuinely enjoyed one another’s company. The boys played sports, ran around outdoors, played video games, and grew up alongside one another. It looked like an enviable childhood.

Only later did I realize how much of it had quietly been held together by the parents.

He was bright, sensitive, funny, perceptive, and vulnerable to isolation. But he was also vibrant in ways that are difficult to fully capture on paper. He loved everything about trains from the time he was little — so much so that at just 18 months old, he figured out how to operate our VCR so he could replay train documentaries and watch steam engines puff down the tracks over and over again.

As a young child, there was something almost magnetic about his competence and confidence. Other boys gravitated toward him easily, and much of our social life in those early years revolved around families wanting to spend time together. He moved through childhood with a kind of joyful self-assurance that made it hard to imagine how lonely he would eventually become.

He strutted down golf fairways with total confidence, zoomed around on his three-wheel scooter and carved gracefully down ski mountains. He had an infectious laugh that filled a room – one I could produce on demand by nuzzling my face into his neck – and a voracious appetite for reading and learning about whatever captured his interest. When he was in grade school, we would often find him sitting on the toilet reading The Economist while drinking Earl Grey tea — as though he were a tiny middle-aged British intellectual trapped in a child’s body.

When the pandemic disrupted everyone’s routines, the fragility of those friendships became painfully obvious. The other boys drifted toward one another or formed new social circles. None looked for him, and he did not seem to possess the instinctive social skills needed to maintain those connections independently.

Watching that unfold was heartbreaking because it exposed how alone he actually was beneath what had appeared to be a normal social life.

Online communities gradually became the place where he felt most understood, most validated, and least alone.

During his junior year of high school, I took a two-month sabbatical from work and immersed myself in the transgender field. Instead of getting on the train to Wall Street, I got on my laptop and stayed there day after day into the evening. I had to force myself outside to counteract muscle atrophy. I spoke to affirming parents, met parents through PITT and ROGD Boys, listened to clinicians from multiple perspectives, hired parent coaches, and read obsessively. I was trying to understand what was happening to my child while also trying not to lose him.

Some of that support genuinely helped me become calmer, more thoughtful, and more emotionally regulated as a parent. At the time, I still believed that if I learned enough, listened carefully enough, and found the right professionals, I could somehow help guide him back toward stability.

Around this same period, another crisis quietly entered the picture.

Between junior and senior year of high school, he attended a two-week academic summer program away from home, living independently for the first time. It was there that he first fully presented as female in real life and began consistently using his chosen name with peers.

It was also there that he began starving himself.

At the time, we did not yet fully understand what was happening. Later, it became clear that he had become terrified that testosterone would continue masculinizing his body. Restricting food became a way to try to halt development and regain a sense of control over a body increasingly experienced as intolerable.

And then he turned 18. He eagerly went to Planned Parenthood and started estrogen and spironolactone after earlier attempts we had intervened in as parents of a minor redirecting to unpack what seemed like self-loathing.

Watching your child slowly disappear physically while simultaneously insisting these choices are necessary for survival creates a crushing helplessness.

And yet, paradoxically, this period also overlapped with the first meaningful social belonging he had experienced in years.

After several deeply isolated years, he connected with another student through a shared interest in — of all things, his love from childhood — trains and transit systems. That friendship eventually pulled him into a theater tech social circle, and almost overnight, his world changed.

At almost the exact same time, he began socially experimenting with a female identity online and increasingly in real life.

For a child who had spent years lonely and disconnected, suddenly becoming socially successful felt transformative.

He became outgoing in ways we had rarely seen before. Our apartment filled with theater tech kids hanging out, laughing, eating, and spending time together. He hosted cooking competitions in our big kitchen while his musically talented friends gathered around the piano taking turns playing beautiful music late into the evening. For the first time in years, he experienced what it felt like to be genuinely sought out, included, and enjoyed by a group of peers.

His senior year became socially rich and alive in a way I had almost stopped hoping for. He graduated with a close-knit group of friends, none of whom were trans. In fact, he often expressed annoyance with what he perceived as performative aspects of LGBTQ culture and desperately wished people simply perceived him as female without knowing he was trans at all.

One time, he got upset when a friend mentioned that he was trans in front of someone new he had just met. More than transitioning, what he seemed to want was the chance to exist socially as someone entirely different from the lonely, awkward boy he had experienced himself to be for so many years.

He also spoke about future relationships as though medical transition might eventually allow him to leave his past behind entirely. He seemed genuinely convinced that surgery would one day make him physically indistinguishable from a woman born female — that no one would know unless he chose to tell them.

Over time, and after many painful discussions, he has at least begun acknowledging that reality may be more complicated than that. But those conversations revealed something important to me: beneath so much of this was not merely a desire to be female, but a longing to escape shame and scrutiny and to find love while feeling fully accepted.

The realization didn’t arrive all at once. It accumulated through the way he talked about his own past — the wistful tone when he described elementary school, “I used to be popular,” and the contempt when he got to the early high school years: “I was so lame. Dead. Made no effort.” He said those things about himself with such consistency that eventually I heard what was underneath them. Not a boy who needed a different body. A boy who needed a different story about himself. The self he was fleeing wasn’t male — it was the self that had failed, that had been left out, that had stopped trying. And the self he was building, piece by piece, was one where he mattered to people, was sought out, was enjoyed. That was what he had always wanted. The transition was the vehicle. The destination was self-worth.

Then graduation came, and the entire structure disappeared.

None of those friends went to the same college. He arrived on campus carrying enormous hopes for reinvention. Before school started, our family had taken a trip to Japan where he carefully assembled an entirely new wardrobe for this imagined new life.

Instead, he found himself disappointed almost immediately. He came home describing the students as “boring kids who all wear the same thing.” But beneath that complaint, I think, was something much more painful: the realization that identity alone could not recreate the sense of belonging he had briefly found during senior year.

He isolated almost entirely in his dorm room that first semester. He had no roommate, rarely socialized, failed most of his classes, and lost a dangerous amount of weight.

What followed was one after another — inpatient and intensive outpatient eating disorder programs met with partial compliance, brief optimism, setbacks, and exhaustion. His underlying issues were scratched at but never cracked; he was too complex, and he never stayed long enough for anyone to get there. He eventually returned home still unready to return to college or function independently.

But over time, I also lost faith in the idea that professionals necessarily understood my child better than I did. One therapist, in particular, repeatedly framed nearly every struggle in our family through a single lens. She eventually went so far as to suggest that my refusal to embrace his chosen name and pronouns caused his anorexia.

I thought I might actually fall off my chair. Not only did it feel profoundly unfair, it radically oversimplified an extraordinarily complicated child and family situation.

Years of social isolation, anxiety, rigidity, online immersion, identity experimentation, fear of masculinity, eating disorder pathology, and developmental vulnerabilities were all collapsed into a simplistic narrative in which parental non-affirmation became the central explanatory force.

That was around the time I began losing confidence that some professionals were seeing my son as a whole person rather than filtering his life through a predetermined ideological framework.

My refusal to use his chosen name and pronouns was a specific judgment about a specific child — a vulnerable, isolated boy being offered a permanent medical solution to what looked to me like a profound social and psychological crisis. The science supporting large-scale affirmation of adolescents is thin. The intervention is not. My son needed room to be a complicated kid and figure himself out. I’m not sure he got it.

At some point, my husband and I realized we could no longer financially support a life built entirely around isolation and screens. Our home had to become a bridge back toward real life, not a bunker from it.

So we changed things. We limited devices. We tied privileges to participation in life outside the home. Work, volunteering, contribution, structure — not because we believed these things would magically fix him, but because real life itself increasingly felt like the treatment.

Progress has been uneven and painfully slow. But I still believe real-world engagement is one of the few things capable of interrupting the cycle of isolation, avoidance, and endless online reinforcement.

He is now 20 and still on the same medications, only at increasingly higher dosages.

There are moments when my fears about the long-term consequences of the path he is on feel so overwhelming that I have to mentally look away just to function. Sometimes I find myself crying alone in the car or on the subway, grieving the loss of the happy carefree kid I once knew while fearing what may still lie ahead physically, emotionally, and socially.

Ironically, one of the most influential moments came not from us but from one of his peers. A friend bluntly told him he needed to get over his anxiety and get back to school. That single comment accomplished more than months of conversations with his parents. It reinforced something painful but important: young people often hear peers differently than they hear us.

Throughout all of this, there has also been our daughter.

She is finishing her junior year of high school and has absolutely been collateral damage in ways that are harder to measure but no less real. I see it in the way her door closes when the apartment fills with another argument — the air going out of the room, the whole apartment contracting around the crisis. And I hear it in the car, on the way to practices and tournaments, when she’ll suddenly blurt out that we let him get away with murder, that it isn’t fair, that she sees everything. My husband’s instinct is to accommodate; mine is to hold structure; she has watched us disagree about this for years, and she knows it. One thing I have become deeply committed to is giving her as normal a childhood as I possibly can despite everything. I drive her to every practice, every tournament, every school commitment. I rarely miss a game or a school event because I refuse to let this crisis consume her adolescence too.

And honestly, when I deal with ordinary teenage surliness, eye rolls, or attitude, I sometimes feel oddly grateful for the normalcy of it. It reminds me that not every parenting struggle has to feel existential.

At this point, I no longer believe I control my son’s choices. I cannot force insight, maturity, or change. I cannot compete with the constant reinforcement he receives online and from peers who see the world differently than I do.

What I can do is maintain limits, preserve our relationship where possible, encourage engagement with real life, and continue loving him while refusing to pretend I believe harmful choices are healthy ones.

Mostly, I hope.

I hope maturity matters.

I hope real life matters.

I hope meaningful human relationships matter.

I hope time matters.

And I hope that the parts of him that are thoughtful, capable, funny, curious, and deeply human continue to grow stronger with time, experience, and real connection.

I hope he is on a round trip ticket back to him.

Welcome to the PITT weekly roundup where you’ll find a list of the week’s postings along with links to some of our favorite books, videos, social media, and podcasts. Please continue the fight against the harms of gender ideology by sharing.

Access to all PITT content is free. Our objective is to inform the public of the devastating impact of gender ideology on families through our personal experiences.

Quote of the Week from We Have Reached Five Years: “None of us chose this path, but we don’t have to walk it alone. Seek out other parents. Build connections. Find support in communities like Our Duty, Parents of ROGD Kids, and Beyond Trans. There is strength in coming together and forming new bonds.”

PITT POSTS THIS WEEK:

Friday, June 5: She Said “I’m Sorry.”

Thursday, June 4: PARANO

Wednesday, June 3: You Will Not Erase our Children

Tuesday, June 2: We Have Reached Five Years!

Monday, June 1: We are the Ones Who Love Them

IMAGES THAT CAPTURE IT

At 14, I endured ‘gender-affirming care.’ I’ll suffer with that for the rest of my life Independent Women by Claire Abernathy, May 26, 2026

A 21-year-of woman shares her story of being put on testosterone at age 14 and having having a double mastectomy shortly after that. She writes: “Imagine getting put on testosterone at 14 years old because doctors convinced you that if you didn’t, you may be suicidal. I cannot restore what doctors removed from me. I cannot recover my original voice. I cannot undo the damage done to my body. But I can tell the truth.”

IMAGES THAT CAPTURE IT

ORDER PITT’S BOOK

Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans: Tales from the Home Front in the Fight to Save Our Kids, a compendium of some of the most compelling essays yet from PITT.

SHARE YOUR STORY

Have a story to share about gender ideology? Submit to Pitt@genspect.org

This month it will mark four years. Four years from that Friday afternoon we opened the email from our son. Our firstborn. Our pride and joy. He was ending his first year of college and seemed to be adjusting really well. He always was precocious, struggled socially, and was plagued by rigidity of thought, but this year seemed to be going well. He had made friends and overcome obstacles. We were hopeful. Then we opened that email.

It was an apology and an announcement. It said, “I’m trans.” The amount of shock and fear and confusion that would become our constant companions was palpable. It grabbed our chins and forced us to look this new reality in the face. It never let go. We looked but we couldn’t understand. There had been no signs. No warning. It just was. And it still is.

The days and months that followed are a blur of physical and emotional turmoil and grief. So many tears, even more questions, and so very many times I locked myself in the bathroom, public or private, just to try and regain some sense of composure. Everything and everyone reminded me of my loss and grief even though almost no one knew. I walked as a stranger among friends and family members who would never have guessed the weight on my chest, the tears behind my eyes, the shattered dreams and any hope for the future.

The calendar marked a year and then longer and it started to become clear this wasn’t something he was trying out. This wasn’t a “phase.” There was medicalization and visible changes - changes to his body and changes to our relationship. Every passing day brought more things to let go of, more memories that were now stained, more photographs too painful display. Sometimes I get a jolt of shock at the memory of all the things I’ve done and endured in the past few years.

We did eventually start to cry less, to escape to the bathroom less, and learn how to be reminded and yet not fall apart. We are functioning. A few more people know now, but not many. Our wound that keeps deepening and getting reopened is not the kind other people can see. It isn’t cancer. It isn’t job loss. It isn’t a death. The few people who do know hesitate to bring it up or, when they do, it is all the more painful due to awkwardness that is not their fault. Worse yet, they’ll say “I’m sure it’s too painful to talk about.” Of course it’s too painful to talk about, I want to shout, but that doesn’t let you off the hook! I know this really means it’s too painful for them to hear. I never bring it up, although it is all I want to talk about.

I’ve had to pay a stranger to talk to me about it. Therapy has been exceedingly helpful, but it is still therapy. It is not a person I had a relationship with during the “before” period of my life. She came “after” and “because of” that fateful day. That day that divided my life into a before and after. She’s never met my son, let alone known him, watched him grow, loved him. I have come to accept this over the years. I’ve learned to be more compassionate with people. Learned they’re trying their best in an impossible situation. That doesn’t make the void I feel go away, but it makes the relationship with others more grace filled.

In January I traveled to my hometown to attend the memorial service for my grandmother. I don’t know how many of my family know about my son. I’ve only told my mom and my two sisters, but I understand this kind of thing leaks out. Everyone played by the rules and we stuck to fond memories and pleasant current circumstances in our conversations. It was a wonderful time remembering the carefree days of my childhood and seeing people who loved me simply because I was family.

The room was familiar. I’d never been in it, but I’ve been in many like it. A multi-purpose space in the basement of a hospital or nursing home. We all trickled in and filled our plates with the typical post-funeral food through a buffet line. After talking and eating, eating some more and talking some more, people started to say their goodbyes. I mingled a bit as I moved closer and closer to the door. My sisters were standing near me but talking with others. Then my mom’s cousin turned to me as if to say the obligatory “It was good to chat with you again! It’s been too long.” Instead, when her eyes fell on me her face changed. Her face fell. She put her hand on my arm, looked into my eyes and said, “I’m just so sorry.” A sob and an incomplete “oh!” choked in my throat. It felt like it echoed through the room. Tears instantly swelled as my insides shook. I had never told her about my pain and social convention dictated she not acknowledge that she knew. But she stepped outside of all the formalities. She left her chance for a nice and neat exit and she went into the place of my deepest pain. In her face I could see she longed to do something for me, to take it away, but also knew she was powerless to do so. We both quickly composed ourselves, gave a hug and finished our requisite parting words.

The impact of seeing compassion and care, free of any judgement or questions, or worse, any answer or advice was profound. I felt that she saw her small offering as inadequate, but truth be told it was the most consolation I had felt from another human being. In that moment I knew all I wanted from the world was for them to come around me, put their hands on me, and to say “I’m just so sorry. I’m just so very sorry.”

I pray you too, readers, find compassion and care. And perhaps we can offer this solace more meaningfully and skillfully to others suffering because of this unique pain we carry.

Everyone is judging me;
they think my bracelet’s infantile.
They’re whispering behind my back.
They think I have no sense of style.
 
No one really cares for me;
my family tries to kill my joy.
They just want to wreck my life.
They all pretend I’m not a boy.
 
No one thinks I’m cool or smart.
Guys won’t give me the time of day.
God is out to get me too…
I think that I should run away.

For more on this author.

From the first moment I held you in my arms, I was captured in my heart and soul. Such a precious cargo! This feeling I had already had the great privilege of experiencing several times with my other grandchildren. Having come from another nation which experienced war, I knew some difficult times. I embraced this nation, and its culture with all I had. Never, ever did I think I would be fighting for the very lives, existence, and legacy of our innocent children, who have been under attack by devastating horrors perpetrated by an evil so pervasive it knocks you off of your feet. Never would I have believed that “trusted” schools, teachers, counselors, medical professionals, mental institutions, and our very governments would ever usher in a “Time Such as This.”

“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” Ghandi

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its CHILDREN.!” Mandela

Daily I receive a newsletter from PITT (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans). The parents, grandparents, siblings pour out their hearts over the losses of their children to an evil ideology and social contagion which robs families of all dignity and decency. I cry along with them as this loss has also visited our family and the reality, the horrible truth, is often more than I can bear. As I look at pictures of these precious loved ones as they were growing up, the little forts built, the fun games played, the family cherished memories, and see them lost to such vicious and sick times, the pain reverberates through my being. When I hear parents say they don’t even know where there children are because they were whisked away, tricked into believing their parents were bad, I am shocked. I am appalled at the trickery which school counselors and teachers unleash on vulnerable children who have been indoctrinated into believing this horror show. Often those doing this were tricked themselves in their youth. How did we move from Howard Dully’s Lobotomy to Chloe Cole’s Gender Mutilations? Either way, it is a cruelty and a crime against humanity.

How did our society move from Total Outrage at the erasure and replacement of true morals of “Care” and the ethic of “Do No Harm” to our children, to deliberate acts of psychological, chemical, medical severing of a child’s mind, healthy body parts, destruction of fertility, permanent destruction of their bodily integrity?

How did a nation adopt a Notion of “CARE” in which a “Scalpel-rush” driven policy, powered by profit, false ideology, replaced the original “DO NO HARM” model of centuries? When did the Healers become the butchers?

Over the past decade we have witnessed a cultural shift so profound, yet we did not notice the impact on family relationships until it was too late. New words came into use, such as Toxic, Boundaries, Narcissist, Protection of my peace or space. The use of many professional mental health terms became every day words in social media, and a growing trend for family estrangement. What used to be done in conflict, forgiveness, repair of relationships, was now used as a reason to Permanently cut off family members.

THIS IS NO ACCIDENT! This cultural shift has many coordinated parts.

Along with a new language of terms, came a rise in the need for Personal Happiness, Emotional Comfort, which comes over all else. Where the previous generations were taught and raised to have Patience, Sacrifice, Forgiveness, this new generation is being told to remove anything that causes emotional discomfort. They are teaching to throw away family for new family scenarios, driven by internet chat rooms, memes, apps., new models of what is your real family, all the while replacing your actual loving family.

Family is now disposable, like your actual body, while generations of love and dedication is literally thrown away. We cannot adopt this erasure of our very flesh and blood children, our whole lives spent as families, and our very lives! STAND UP NOW ALL PARENTS!

The PANDEMIC, known as Covid, created more isolation, and digital interference, influence, and sped up the trends. Kids had more anxiety, and turned to on-line communities for validation and guidance. We were witnessing actual social engineering of our society. The models, ushering in this widespread disruption of children’s minds, helped slowly to erase real family bonds, for the new fake family communities. Were they encouraging healing or normalizing permanent divisions in families? As the parents felt profound grief, confusion, depression, the kids, if adults, often felt relief and a sort of freedom, which they later would regret, and be really sorry. Unknown to the parents was the total transformation of morals, ethics, standards, once held as “Honorable” and now replaced by a Freer Model, like opposite of moral trends. Their identities were Changed from resilient, forgiving, family centered young people, to estranged, confused, angry, misguided, actually brainwashed youth, experiencing life from a whole new lens of depravity. They were being told their bodies are in need of changes, both chemical and surgical. But this came after the mental indoctrination was complete, to drive them to the next phase of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and then on to actual healthy body part amputations. The Family, therefore, had to be undone, to weaken the whole nation!

75,000 healthcare professionals from more than 60 countries worldwide have signed a declaration by Doctors Protecting Children, to stop all of mutilation of minors!

American College of Pediatrics is right there with these doctors. Why do so many medical organizations, AMA, pharmaceutical companies push so hard against any professionals who raise the Alarm? Billions upon Billions of $Dollars would be your answer, along with truly Compromised People!

Most professional organizations literally censure, silence, fire, remove doctors who dissent, or do actual research papers, bury their findings, and use a negative control on actual medical information. They are controlling the narratives. Why? So many have lost their sense of a Moral Compass. While the Colorado legislature votes down protections and recompense for botched surgeries on ‘detransitioners’ and kids who are harmed by malpractice, deceptive practices, and other liabilities, much of the medical community literally played a game of Selective Data and failed often to hide the true risks to young minds, and bodies.

Thank God for brave kids like Chloe Cole, Dr. Haim, Antoinette de la Cruz, and so many others, who told their stories, and now to the brave ones filing lawsuits and winning them, thereby exposing the huge fraud being done to our youth.

The new ideological world of gender affirmation/mutilation has exposed the thousands of young people being damaged, the cruelty of the judicial systems, Human Services, removing healthy children from their parents, and placing them in false affirmative/often harmful environments, or so-called new homes. Money does not protect anyone. Many in Hollywood and Silicon Valley are falling for the lies and deceptions. These abuses of children crosses into lines of medical professionals who literally are mentally sick, and enjoy doing actual castrations, amputations, and mental normalization of hyper-sexualization of minors. The entire culture was and is based on ideology of harm, not true science. This will be looked back in history as a time of horror and butchery. Many states have stopped allowing these “Dark Ages” antics on humanity. Even cases by some Supreme Courts in the states, have also upheld the validity of the Presidential Executive orders to stop all mutilation to minors, to stop boys in girls sports, and to stop the horrible trafficking of children. Further, nationwide, approximately 1000 kids daily are trafficked. I feel it could be even more. The industry there is huge, like $150,000,000,000 annually, which is like the drug industry. We, the parents, have to stop the Multi-Billion Dollar Medical, Pharmaceutical Industry SHAM!

Last year I, along with approximately 10,000 others, submitted testimony and 10 attachments to the Federal Trade Commission as they are investigating the Fraud and Deception of Gender Affirming Harm to Minors. Right now, private and non-profits (LIKE WPATH) are supporting youth, by giving them easy letters to get prescriptions for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, often without even a day or weeks delay. These groups help support the new: “I am better equipped than your loving parents to decide what you take, how you assault your body, and we will hide you from your families” Some states have passed legislation that literally takes away parents rights if they do not automatically GENDER AFFIRM THEIR CHILDREN! Parents need to stand up to ALL school boards who are allowing these atrocities to play out on their innocent children! 51% of Americans currently are reading at a 6^th grade level, yet the Public Schools are soaking the taxpayers dry for Billions of Dollars for the top tier of administrators, and infrastructure that short changes real academics, while embracing Justice Warrior teaching, LGBTQ ETC. SEL, DEI, CRT, all designed to create special groups, divide all kids, and concentrate more on these ideologies, rather than the real purpose of learning. Teachers are often paid less, while Unions, Departments of Education, and Parent Teacher Associations are brainwashed, and promote all of these Wrong-Headed Venues. Do not let our children be forced into synthetic futures & medical futures!

Remember, last year Colorado actually passed a bill to allow Trans felons to change their names, for equity and protection for trans people, and that allowed even a criminal to hide among a community. With approximately 700 bills each of the last few years, many bills promoted FORCED ACCEPTANCE OF GENDER CARE/AKA/HARM TO MINORS, with threats of removing children from parents. Counselors in Colorado are forced to only guide to gender Dysphoria, not the many other reasons a child could be experiencing mental trauma, such as rape, beatings, drugs, traumas, autism, and more. Bills were passed to not imprison child rapists! You cannot make this up! Health care was forced to pay for “Transgender procedures”, but not for “De-Transitioner’s mental and physical harms! WHY WOULD THAT BE? The invasive and unconstitutional nature of these bills being passed are nationwide and only WE can stop them! I personally wrote on over 280 bills in the last three yearly legislative sessions, and this year zoom testified on over 38 bills. My circumstances kept me from travelling to Denver to do so. Over the last 6 years myself, and many incredible patriots went to city council, commissioners, school boards, library boards, public meetings, local politics, to speak up and shine a public light on these atrocities. We protested at Drag Shows where children were brought in for Lunch Hours? Why were our children being exposed to grown men performing, often in very little clothing, suggestive performances, and often hiding actual Drag Rings of Sex trade of young boys? All of this is being done to our communities in the name of “CARE.” This is not Care, this is Butchery!

If I sound crazy, I promise you I am not! As I witness all of this at age 76, I am one of the lucky folks surrounded with action oriented patriots teaching everything from self defense, first aid, sustainability, civics, political action, local community engagement, and the act of Standing up for our Communities. They have taught me so much, but the job is full time, and we do have to fight for our Republic if we want to keep it! OVER 2.5 million Americans now identify as Trans – mental or physical- of those about 274,000 are children: Thanks Schools for promoting this Mental Illness!

Having read and used a lot of sources, I will list just a few here, and apologize for any left out, of which there are many:

Lost in Transnation: Dr. M. Grossman, Irreversible Damage: A. Shrier, Beneath Sheep’s Clothing: J. Behling,

Tons of PITT letters & pleas for help: A Few recent used in this editorial: “The Cost of a Broken Bond”.

Lobotomy: Howard Dully, “The Moral Inversion of Care”: Jason Lion, Erin Lee: Art Club (And Her Vigorous Fight for all Children: PKC) “Dysphoriamovie.com,” “No Way Out.” Film, “Whose Children Are They”: Floras, Genspect, Our Duty, “Escaping the Rainbow Plantation”: Rich Guggenheim, CPAN-Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, American College of Pediatricians, Doctors Protecting Children, James Lindsay, Alvin Lui, Children’s Health Defense Fund (RFKJr) Countless Brave whistleblowers, Harmed Youth, Doctors, Therapists, Nurses, & parents nationwide fighting in huge numbers. PLEASE SEEK THEM OUT!

Five years ago today, we launched PITT. At the time, I truly believed that if people simply heard parents’ stories this ideology would come to an end. I thought (I realize naively now) that if people were exposed to the lack of evidence to support gender ideology, if they learned about what was happening in other countries, if they could come to see how decent, loving parents were being tarred as transphobic, if they read stories of the chemical castration of confused kids, they would be shaken out of their complacency, give up on “be kind” and see this for the medical scandal it is. But I was wrong.

What has happened is something I could never have anticipated: so many brave parents stepping forward to share their experiences, and so many others reading, listening, and engaging. I didn’t realize just how much this space would be needed—or how many lives it would touch. And yet, five years later, this issue is still very much with us.

I hold onto the hope that one day I’ll write the final post—the one where this chapter has closed, where no more children or families are being harmed.

As parents, we have endured so much. Some of us were completely blindsided when our children told us they thought they were “born in the wrong body” and were really the opposite sex. Others have faced estrangement, watched their children undergo medical interventions, or experienced the unimaginable loss of a child. The weight of this has been life-altering.

Please take care of yourselves during these difficult times. The pain of losing your child—whether emotionally or physically—is profound. As my husband often reminds me, it is still possible to build a meaningful and fulfilling life, even after everything we’ve been through.

None of us chose this path, but we don’t have to walk it alone. Seek out other parents. Build connections. Find support in communities like Our Duty, Parents of ROGD Kids, and Beyond Trans.

There is strength in coming together and forming new bonds.

Adjusting to this new reality—and letting go of the dreams we once held for our children—is not easy. But together, we can move forward.

You are not alone. Would you like to share your story? It can be cathartic for you, and all stories help to advance the case against gender ideology. Please consider sharing your story with PITT.

With love,
PITT Editors

My youngest son has always loved chocolate. He is the one who was told he was a woman and believed it. When he was two, he ate too many s’mores on the Fourth of July and threw up. On Halloween, we took our boys to their aunt and uncle’s house after trick-or-treating. I told his aunt that he had already had a lot of candy and should not have any more. She gave it to him anyway. I warned her but I still feel bad about the rug. The same thing happened at Thanksgiving with after-dinner chocolate turkeys.

On Christmas, I put the candy from the stockings where he could not reach it. The other adults thought I was being unkind, even after I told them about the evidence from the three previous holidays. My son might have thought I hated him. But I was the one who loved him and did not want him to be sick.

I see the same pattern with my son’s desire to be a woman. The Cass Review, the study from Finland, and the data on elevated death rates in Sweden are examples of the evidence that shows that gender-affirming “care” causes many health problems and shortens lives. My son’s doctors may think they are being kind when they ignore this evidence and give him what he wants, but I will do what I can to stop him from getting these treatments because I still love him and I do not want him to be sick.

Welcome to the PITT weekly roundup where you’ll find a list of the week’s postings along with links to some of our favorite books, videos, social media, and podcasts. Please continue the fight against the harms of gender ideology by sharing.

Access to all PITT content is free. Our objective is to inform the public of the devastating impact of gender ideology on families through our personal experiences.

Quote of the Week from There Was No One: “No one. There was no one. Their concern was directed back at me. If I wanted the best outcome for my trans child then I needed to support “him”. That is when I fell. That is when I saw the world open and invert into darkness.”

PITT POSTS THIS WEEK:

Friday, May 29: Repost: Planned Parenthood-You’ve sold out Women and Children

Thursday, May 28: Seven Years On

Wednesday, May 27: Deep Roots in Shallow Times

Tuesday, May 26: There Was No One

Monday, May 25: Sea of Lies

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT - SALL GROVER

ORDER PITT’S BOOK

Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans: Tales from the Home Front in the Fight to Save Our Kids, a compendium of some of the most compelling essays yet from PITT.

SHARE YOUR STORY

Have a story to share about gender ideology? Submit to Pitt@genspect.org

Dear Planned Parenthood,

You have been an important health care provider to me in the past and I deeply value your care for everyone seeking reproductive health services. It is with great sadness that I cannot continue to support your work. Your new policy of 'gender affirming hormone therapy' strikes me as terribly misguided and potentially incredibly harmful.

You advertise the ability to be prescribed 'gender affirming hormones' "..the same day as your first visit. No letter from a mental health provider is required." I have some specific thoughts on what makes this a very dangerous option:

• Physical Impact of Hormones: My mother passed away from complications from post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy that resulted in malignant cancer and stroke. No doctor took the time to review her genetic history to assess whether she was predisposed to cancer or cardiovascular risk from exogenous hormones. It turns out, she was in a high-risk category for both cancer and cardiovascular disease. During the same day visits you advertise, do you have a conversation about genetic risk factors? Are your younger patients able to articulate their genetic risk factors? Are you evaluating any cancer or cardiovascular risks in your patients before prescribing hormones that could elevate risks in predisposed populations? If not, why not?

• Mental Health Background of Prospective Patients: I have a child with rapid onset gender dysphoria. This child of mine was recently diagnosed with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Other diagnoses common to this group include anxiety and depression. Does this profile sound familiar? It should, because a significant subset of the population reaching out to organizations like yours for transgender pharmaceutical treatment have ADHD, ASD, or both, and very frequently depression and anxiety. Has Planned Parenthood noticed this? Have you inquired with your new patients? If not, why not? While my child learns to live as a neurodiverse person in this world, I would hate to see him put aside skills and tools to help him achieve self-acceptance in favor of trying to become a new person, and potentially add hormonal fluctuations to existing mental health challenges. However he dresses and characterizes himself, he will always be this unique person on the inside. Could he walk into Planned Parenthood without a letter from any of his care providers, and without the rich context of his history and mental health challenges be offered the message that a new identity awaits him? Would you inform him that drugs and surgery will not help him outrun his intrinsic nature and his unique way of seeing the world? Would you care that your treatment may add to his mental health challenges? As someone on the spectrum whose struggles with my own identity as a biological woman made me the person I am, I cannot imagine peddling this 'solution' to vulnerable, autistic youth. This population deserves better than to be 'affirmed' that they are wrong and in the wrong body. They deserve better care than a one-size-fits-all solution. The autistic population tends to see gender in a different way than our neurotypical peers, but this does not mean that we have to sign up for a lifetime of pharmaceuticals to conform and be accepted.

• Gender vs. Sex: As a feminist, I find the idea of selling the narrative that society can (and must!) affirm a new identity and conflate sex and gender to be misogynistic. Where do biological women and our specific rights fit into this narrative? If gender identity is valued more than biological reality, the rights and protections for biological women become meaningless. I encourage your organization to take a step back and more fully appreciate how this new direction and set of principles may impact biological women. We owe it to young women to look out for their rights and be honest in our discussions about sex and gender and how one is immutable and the other is not. I believe you are abandoning the rights and protections of biological women in your fervor to be a provider of trans services.

For these reasons and so many more, I will no longer donate to Planned Parenthood. You are harming a whole generation of young people with the services you offer, and I cannot in good conscience support this in any way. There are so many more like me who support a woman's right to choose and know that you have been our most important source of help in the past. I am really sad that this is where we part ways.

Seven years on and I still feel just as disgusted with the societal scandal and medical scam that is “trans.” I am just as angry with the adults who self-aggrandize at the expense of vulnerable youth. I am just as annoyed every time I see another politician or entertainer or journalist or Facebook post lying about a fictional class of people born with the necessity to be lied to about their sex and the necessity to be chemically and/or surgically altered to appear as the opposite sex in order to have any semblance of happiness, and how stunning and brave these special people are for meeting their needs despite the alleged negative judgment they face while doing so.

I am just as outraged when I hear another story about a woman attacked by a man in prison who pretends at being a woman; at another female athlete deprived of her rightful place on a podium because a male athlete was put in her place; at another woman fired from her job for complaining about men in the women’s changing room; or, and this is what really gets my goat (I looked it up, and nobody really knows where that expression comes from, although popular theories include stealing the goat that’s used to calm down a race horse), another law aimed at making it easier to chemically castrate children, causing, among other things, symptoms of menopause in pre-teens!

But all of that has little to do with my day-to-day life with a 20-year-old daughter attending a local college, working part-time, hanging out with her friends, lying to the world about her body, rejecting and chemically assaulting that body on a daily basis with synthetic testosterone. (She’s been doing this for two years now.) Nowadays, “trans” is just the way things are in my home, with my daughter.

On a daily basis, I just accept that my daughter has much hairier legs than her older brother or her father, a deepened voice, acne that never seems to go away (and that didn’t come until she started on “T”), and some features that are neither male nor female. I just accept that she pretends to be male to most people she already knows, and every new person she meets. I just accept that her breasts are suffering severe atrophy to the point that she can wear a thin t-shirt and there is no hint of the breasts that naturally grew during puberty. I just accept that, after two years, there is serious likelihood of damage to her sex organs, and legitimate concern about the blood tests that show things like high cholesterol in a slim, active young person, with legitimate fear for what else may be going haywire.

I realized the other day that this is my life now. It’s like being the parent of a child with drug addiction. At some point, you can’t keep hoping it will go away. Instead, you hope for your child to have the best life possible despite the addiction, not instead of it. Likewise, I am at the point where I just hope for my daughter to have the best life possible despite her belief in “trans,” and her concomitant choice to lie to herself and the world constantly and harm her body more and more each day.

Sure, I occasionally indulge in the momentary fantasy of my daughter as a detransitioner, someone who came to her senses, and realized the whole attempt to play-act at being male is, at best, pointless folly, and, at worst, Guantanamo Bay level psychological and physical torture. But I don’t dwell in that place.

Besides, even thinking of my daughter as a detransitioner is still acknowledging that she’ll never not be someone touched by “trans,” just as an addict is always an addict. She’ll always be touched by trans - trans or detrans. I can no longer hope for my daughter to get out of this unscathed and just move on as if it never happened.

Instead, the fantasy available to me now is to have a daughter who learned from her mistakes, gathered wisdom and strength, and moved on with her life, acknowledging the harms caused by her choices, and learning to live with the physical consequences thereof. And my daily task is to accept that this fantasy may never come true. My daughter may hold onto the “trans” belief forever, living a lie for the rest of her life. She may continue to take the toxic steroids that will inevitably sterilize her and may cause a laundry list of other medical issues. She may move on to have surgeries to remove healthy body parts (although they may be less healthy as a result of the testosterone), or to create faux body parts and stitch them to her body. This could be her life.

Regardless, I will still love her, still cheer her on every time she says or writes something clever and creative, still tell her how proud I am when she takes on new challenges. I will still share a laugh, a meal, a bubble tea or ice cream cone, a TV show or movie, especially all the holiday movies we love so much in December. I will celebrate milestones like graduations, to the extent she is comfortable with her “transphobic” parents being involved. And I will hope she has joy and meaning in her life, a relatively healthy and pain-free existence, and a long and productive life.

I’ll never give up the fantasy of detransition, but I will accept that my daughter has chosen to believe and live the lie of “trans,” and that this is now a part of our collective reality. Our daily existence is forever impacted by “trans.” Seven years on, that’s where I am.

How about all of you? Have you accepted that this is reality? Have you come to terms with it? Did your child desist or detransition? Are you still devastated on a daily basis? Are you just over the whole thing? And what about those of you who are not parents in this? How are you dealing with this issue today? Have you lost interest, given up on it, or moved on, or are you just as horrified as before, or more so, ready to speak out, even just to a few close friends or family? Let me know in the comments.

For more on this author.

Many parents today feel as though they have been pulled into conversations they never expected to have. They are raising children, building homes, managing schedules, and trying to give their sons and daughters a stable foundation, only to discover that strong and differing opinions about identity, gender, and selfhood are being introduced earlier and earlier, often before children are emotionally mature enough to understand them and before parents even realize those messages have entered the room. They soon realize that a “shock and awe” campaign has descended upon childhood itself—fast-moving, emotionally charged, and designed to overwhelm hesitation before families have had time to think, ask questions, or object. In that atmosphere, many parents do not know where to begin. They sense something is wrong, yet the speed and intensity of the messaging can make even clear thinking people feel disoriented. What should have been thoughtful, family-led conversations when necessary are instead presented as settled truths that children must absorb quickly and without question.

Much of the public discussion around gender identity has centered on what happens after a child has already become confused or distressed about the messaging. Yet I kept returning to another question: what can be done before that moment arrives? How do we help children develop a steady sense of self before they encounter voices telling them they must question everything about who they are? The answer, we know, begins where it always has—at home. Children do not need to be burdened with agenda driven controversy. They need steadiness. They need the reassurance that their bodies are not mistakes–and that trusted adults can be wrong. They need to know that growing up often includes awkwardness, uncertainty, and seasons of self-consciousness, none of which require them to reconstruct who they are.

“They need the reassurance that their bodies are not mistakes–and that trusted adults can be wrong.”

I often think back to a moment from years ago when my daughter, now eighteen, was about four years old. She had a playdate with a little boy around the same age—a rough-and-tumble kid full of intense energy, the kind of boy you instinctively know not to hand a stick to. My daughter happened to be wearing a tutu when he arrived, and before long, it was lying on the floor beside the usual scattered companions of play. At one point, without any prompting from the children, the boy’s mother picked up the tutu and became strangely determined to get it onto her son. She crouched beside him, tugging and coaxing, trying to wrangle him into that tutu as he twisted away from her efforts. She was working up a sweat, while trying to gently and softly convey how pretty it was and repeatedly asking him if he wanted to wear it and that he could if he wanted. She was intent on introducing an idea about how fluid those boundaries could be. The boy wanted no part of it. He kicked, grimaced, hit her and resisted the entire exercise with the full honesty only an aggravated child can display.

Ultimately she didn’t succeed, and the children soon moved on, but I remember standing there thinking how oddly forceful she was. Had he chosen it himself in the natural course of play, it would have meant nothing at all. Children experiment, imagine, and move from one thing to the next without ideology attached to it. What struck me was not the costume, but the insistence. It was the sense that an adult was trying to place an idea into a child that had not arisen from the child himself.

At the time, I did not yet understand where our culture was heading. The thought of these kinds of efforts eventually finding their way into classrooms was not even on my radar. Perhaps the roots of this book began to grow right there on that kitchen floor.

Spruce Edwood’s Big Transformation follows the life of a tree named Spruce Edwood, whose outward appearance changes after a ferocious storm. In the aftermath, he begins to question his true identity when a trusted confidant plants the seed that perhaps he was meant to become something else entirely, mirroring the kind of confusion many children experience whenever life feels unstable. Through friendship, reflection, and gentle guidance, Spruce comes to understand something both simple and profound: There are no mistakes. Noisy voices are ultimately not loud enough to erase his true nature.

I wrote this book because children deserve grounding before confusion finds them. They deserve stories that strengthen rather than unsettle them, and parents deserve tools that open meaningful conversations in a way that is age-appropriate, easy, and accessible. Parents often underestimate the power they have in the face of coordinated aggressiveness. It’s a quiet but mighty resistance. A bedtime story read, a calm conversation in the car, a thoughtful answer to a difficult question, or a household atmosphere where truth is spoken gently and confidently, shaping a child more deeply than any institutional messaging ever will. Children are not looking for new thoughts and commentary about gender. They are looking for confidence, security, and clarity from the people they trust most. No school system, activist campaign, or cultural trend can replace the influence of a parent who is present, engaged, and unafraid to talk about hard things with truth and love. It’s the simple things like teaching gratitude and appreciation for the wisdom of their body and teaching them that identity is not a costume to be changed because the loudest voice in the room is trying to tell them they could or should consider it because it’s a happy option.

My feeling is that we are reaching the point where overreach becomes self-exposure. The further these groups push, the more clearly the contradictions and instability of their messaging begin to unravel. What was once presented with calculated messaging disguised as whispered compassion, is increasingly being examined by ordinary people who pause, scratch their heads, and cannot believe the audacity. In many cases, the movement’s greatest opposition is no longer coming from critics alone, but from the consequences of its own self-promotion and excess.

The goal is not to raise children who diminish others or fear those who think differently. The goal is to raise children who take pride in who they are and who can meet the world with kindness while remaining true to themselves first. The work begins long before the crisis emerges. Each of us has a contribution to this effort in potential. My contribution is a story.

Spruce Edwoods’ Big Transformation is available on Amazon.

https://a.co/d/06jQQ38P

Binah Kinzer is a writer and children’s book author living in Northwest Arkansas. Her work includes creative writing and international educational outreach dedicated to making resources on spiritual identity, values, and personal growth accessible across languages and communities. Through her children’s books, she explores themes of identity, resilience, family, and the search for meaning in a changing world.

Do I remember how it used to be. Before. Before this. Sort of. I remember a sense of control. I remember the world felt rational. I remember believing I was a good parent. That I understood what was right and good. That I had done my duty. That strange things happened to other people. But not our family. We were plain people. We had never asked for much. That fairy tales were quaint and antiquated. The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar1 Fascinating but in the past. A society would nevermore combine efforts to take a child from their mother. I believed in the bend of that arc. I believed in public schools. I trusted doctors.

It came all at once in a way. Eliza Mondegreen/Sarah Mittermaier used Dante’s Inferno to describe such a fall. That seemed right. But not at first. When it came it came all at once but not at the very beginning. At first, I was still in and of my world. I was using what I knew to figure it out. I knew my daughter had tipped over. Had been radicalized and I couldn’t reach her. I googled radicalization and came up with far right and Islam. Far left was not in the mix. But the solution would be the same. They talked about time and building a relationship. I couldn’t. She was of majority age and lived away at college. I was in a state of personal desperation. But I still had my world. My world was sane. My world had experts. My world was careful with such things as young people and fertility. My world had a compendium of knowledge on child and adolescent development. There were guardrails in my world. They would help me get her back. They would help keep her from harm.

The crash came when I saw no one was there. No one was going to help me. The therapist. The other therapist. My family, the school. They pushed my daughter right along. Everyone was doing their very best to push me along too. Facts could not penetrate. An exponential contagion was somehow justified. You could be plastered with a label and then safely ignored. But wait - doctors. My doctor. Surely someone in my doctor’s practice would speak straight with my daughter. Speak with authority on the health consequences of these treatments. No. No one. There was no one. Their concern was directed back at me. If I wanted the best outcome for my trans child then I needed to support “him”. That is when I fell. That is when I saw the world open and invert into darkness.

As the tsunami of support for trans-ideology recedes and the waves of logic and science start to roll in, we moms and dads stand with our feet planted in the trough created in that wake. As country after country shutter gender ‘care’ clinics and direct teachers to instruct ‘biology not ideology’ in the classrooms, we stand – our heads just barely reaching above the water. As ‘gender care’ doctors and affirming therapists slink quietly under the waves, hoping no one will notice – our feet remain planted. As landslide lawsuits are won citing ‘medical harm’, we don’t move an inch. As the schools of sparkle friends glide on to the next sparkly object, we silently observe. Our faces pointed directly into the rains, the sun baking on the back of our aged heads, our feet stuck in these murky waters – we remain for one reason and one reason only: You.

We remain because we know that no matter your age now, dear child, we will be your parents until the day we leave this earth. We are in it for the long haul because, as hard as we try, we just can’t leave you behind. So as the rest of the world starts to move on from the Gale Storm of Trans - we assess these fading winds and recessing waters while observing the lies that stirred up this ferocious storm that swept you and your friends up in it. We do this with the hope that the gentle light of truth can finally be seen in the midst of this monstrous sea of lies that is finally starting to recede.

In order to see the truth, of course, we have to first swim with you through the sea of lies:

Lie # 1: Gender is assigned at birth

Since the invention of the sonogram, all research has proven that sex is delineated at the moment of conception and can be determined with 100% accuracy all throughout a pregnancy. At birth, doctors do not ‘assign’ anything, rather they observe the external organs of the baby and then mark the certification as such. There is no gender ‘assigned’ at birth.

You may have heard about ‘some’ babies that are born with male and female external organs so the doctor ‘must be’ assigning a sex. In the extremely rare (fewer than .01%) occasion when this happens, it is considered a medical condition – similar to when people are born with extra limbs. It is not, as Trans activists argue, an indication of a gender confused baby. There is always a dominant sex that can be observed externally and a final determination is conducted with a DNA test. In truth, the advancement of science today makes it so that now - more than ever – nurses, midwives, doctors, and anyone with two eyes can, with 100% accuracy, observe the sex of the baby.

So, no, there are no such thing as a trans-babies.

Lie #2 Doctors & therapists are gods

You have been told – by direct words, subtle implication, authoritative tone and made-up scientific ‘research’ – that Doctors can create life. I am sorry to tell you that this is also a lie. On the therapist side, the psychiatrist claims to ‘see’ you as a transgender child when people who have known you your entire life cannot. They say they are an ‘ally’ of yours and so they claim to know how to care for you so much better than the family that birthed, raised, and loves you to the moon and back.

They imply they are magical beings, able to ‘read’ your soul and further destabilize your fragile mental state by saying that you are not a young man with mental health issues, but rather, your body needs to be changed to match the image in your mind. They encourage the ‘death’ of your healthy maleness and encourage you to exhibit your inner, womanly self. Essentially, they are encouraging your unhealthy thoughts by supporting experimentation on your healthy body.

Like the stories you used to like to read in middle school about evil child catchers, this is quackery driven by hubris only known to mythical gods.

In similar God-like audacity, surgeons chop off healthy body parts or perform experimental surgeries to add on other parts claiming to heal the patient on the table. While they haven’t gotten to you, personally, you have admired the ‘creations’ of new bodies you see in your online community. In reality, these unethical doctors are not ‘healing’ your sparkle friends. Instead, they are creating sick bodies to match the unstable minds.

This obvious negation of the Hippocratic oath is difficult for you to grasp as you always think people were ‘good’ underneath and that they ultimately have your best interest at heart. Your kind heart just can’t see that Doctors are in it not to help you but to help themselves.

In fact, the ugly underbelly of the medical institution is so horrific that many other people have a hard time believing it. Like you, they find it extremely difficult to believe that doctors are too stupid to realize that damaging a body won’t heal a fragile mind. It is even more difficult to believe that medical professionals are handing out prescriptions without acknowledging the long-term ramifications, providing ‘therapy’ sessions that do nothing but drive you further into a rabbit hole, and chopping off healthy body parts creating lifelong patients and destroying the lives of the people seeking help.

They do this for monetary gain, to get on talk shows, for professional and political acknowledgement, to be interviewed as a ‘leader’ in the field of ‘gender medicine’ – all while using the defense ‘I am just doing what I’m told I should do’ by the trans-contingent. Stop and think: where you have heard that defense before?

Trans doctors are not, like gods, creating new ‘transwomen.’ Rather, they are destroying the lives of mentally fragile boys and young men.

Lie #3 - Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?

This Hobson’s Choice blithely handed out to us when we went to support you in getting help is not actually a question but the lie onto itself. Translating this phrase for the truth, that quack we met with should have told us: we have zero evidence that we can help your son, but we will authoritatively say we can. We will proceed with experimental surgeries and prescribe off market drugs so that his healthy body will no longer look like a young man’s – though, of course, we know he won’t actually become a girl. Instead, in his mind which will become fogged over with the experimental cocktail of estrogen, puberty blockers, and anti-depressants we will prescribe, he will believe he is a girl.

This, in turn, will delude him into thinking he is better until he realizes he is irreversibly infertile, unable to have sexual function, starting early Alzheimer’s and is going blind. If he happens to die early – it will be from heart, kidney, brain, or other organ damage; but rest assured, he will have a decreased chance of dying from suicide.

Why, you demand, would someone possibly want to harm another human being?

Follow the logic here: Some Doctors likely believe they are actually doing ‘good’ by following the Dutch Protocol they have been taught by the American Medical Association. Tracking backwards: doctors defer to the AMA that defers to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) whose entire existence is based on promoting the concept that transgender people are a natural and healthy state of being.

Yet, pause for a minute and consider WPATH’s ‘science’ start with John Money, a doctor who started a gender clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1960’s. Sadly, and you will hate hearing this, this phycologist was actuality a predator who used the guise of research to torture and sexually abuse young boys. This doctor’s unethical research became the basis of gender ‘care’ today.

Despite how this sounds, I’m not making this up. You can see all the research in the links below, particularly reference the WPATH Files and the story of John Money’s Gender Clinic.

Best case scenario, doctors are pawns in WPATH’s agenda. Worst case, doctors are following protocols they know don’t work - making money by harming people and using the AMA and WPATH as their defense.

Lie #4 - Transwomen are Women

Transwomen are, sadly, mentally ill men and boys who want to change reality. They may believe they are women because, like you, they experienced early sexual trauma and, as a sensitive young man, this hurt them to the core. Others may be on the autism spectrum, were bullied, or are gay. They may be reacting to violent porn they saw online or the unsettledness of growing up in a disruptive home. They may be rebelling against the ‘alpha’ male we see all around us. Or they may just want to remain in the comfort of childhood. Like you have often expressed, maybe they think life would be easier if you could stay forever in Never Never Land. I, frankly, don’t blame you!

You claim you ‘think’ like a woman but this actually cannot be true. Biology proves that if you are born a boy then you not only have the external parts (strong jaw, a penis, broad shoulders) of a man but you also have the internal parts (i.e. heart, brain, stomach, lungs) of a man. This is not a new development, but actually (see lie #1) occurred at the moment of your conception. And, while you can attempt to change your external parts or take as many pills as your unethical doctor prescribes, your internal parts will always remain the same. This is because of your personal, never changing biological footprint: DNA.

Despite the very cool it sounds when you chant it with a group of like-minded folks, I have to tell you the fact: transwomen are not women. They are young men like yourself hoping to bend reality to reflect the image in their minds.

Lie #5 – Transwomen: Persecuted in the Past but Celebrated Today!

The rumor you love to read about online is that transwomen and transmen existed since the beginning of time and today is simply a continuation of a long and storied history. This vague myth, as you well know from your stellar education, is referring to slaves who were made eunuchs (likely at their distress) so they wouldn’t touch the harem. Alternatively, this reference could be made about strong women who could lead men into battle – like Saint Joan of Arc who we learned about at Church.

But, what about all of those men and women who were more effeminate or more masculine back in the day? Here you need to suss out the fact that each culture and each point in history has its own unique definition of what is ‘feminine’ and what is ‘masculine’. Looking at traditions in China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, for example, mothers were the head of the household, passed down property, and made most of the business decisions. So, if you could go back to that province in ancient China and witnessed a man making all sorts of business decisions, would he have been transwoman or is it more likely he was just a man assuming certain societal roles considered ‘womanly’ for that time and place? Think!

Sure, there are plenty of men and women from the past who found it easier to go about as the opposite gender not because they thought they were the opposite gender but because they were gay. Since these individuals have traditionally faced prejudice and punishment throughout time, it is logical to think they would have hidden their sexual preference by impersonating the opposite gender. Stop for a minute and consider: did they actually believe they were the opposite gender or is it more likely they just gay people acting in a way most accepted in their society at the time?

The logical deduction is that transwomen never existed in history.

Nor do they exist today, I am sorry to say. The vicious lie that society will accept and even celebrate you deludes you and your friends into thinking you will gain a life you are seeking through transgenderism: love, acceptance, safety, friendships, happiness, a ‘tribe’ to call your own. This pile of unadulterated lies endangers your current mental health (dreaming of a better tomorrow) and ensures you will never actually achieve your hearts’ desires - even if you are somehow able to live a long life. What I want to make clear that apparently no mental health ‘professional’ has been able to express: is that your desire for these things is absolutely normal. You don’t need to change your external self to gain these things. You are perfect just as you are. In truth, the more odd looking, ‘misgendered,’ angry, physically ill, sexually dysfunctional, and incapable of coherent thought you get – the further from love, acceptance, friendships, and happiness you will be. It’s not because people are mean or ‘hate you’ or ‘wish you were dead.’ It is simply because we live in a world filled with humans who want to befriend, marry, and hang out with people they can relate to. Like you, they want to be part of a group they consider ‘their tribe’ and the way you are distancing yourself by claiming you are a ‘hir’ or a ‘they’ or that you are any number of the +’s on the end of the LGBTQ+ label, makes you separate and apart from most of the human race. It makes you less likely to form healthy relationships and have a robust social and emotional life all of us humans need and want. It pushes you further away from what you are seeking.

They have been telling the lie so loudly and for so many years that many good people like yourself have taken it as the truth.

Finally, Truth

The only truth in this sad trans saga is our love for you, dear one. As much as we want to dive into these black waters and swim out to you, we moms and dads hold back, knowing that the truth must take route in your own heart to pierce the many trans-lies that have been sold to you. As much as we want to take vengeance from those who aided and abetted your mental and physical decline, we wait. As much as we want to scream at those ‘kind’ supporters pushing you further into a fantasy world, we remain silent. As much as we want to pull down those who have pulled you down into searching for something you will never obtain, we hold off.

We, your parents and siblings, old friends and grannies, aunties and uncles, remain standing with arms open and love in our hearts as we wait. We wait for that time when the light of truth shines through and you can see your way out of this terrible storm.

Until then, and for however long it takes, we are standing for you. We wait, solid, like a lighthouse, hoping someday you can see the light of our love and this truth of that will help guide you back to shore.

Lie #1 (NIH Study)

Lie #2 (Scientist Steven Myers)

Lie #3 (WPATH Report) Reimer twins; Dr. Money

Lie #4 (Lionel Shriver) CASS Review

Lie #5 (Mia Hughes); Manhattan Institute Think Tank

Welcome to the PITT weekly roundup where you’ll find a list of the week’s postings along with links to some of our favorite books, videos, social media, and podcasts. Please continue the fight against the harms of gender ideology by sharing.

Access to all PITT content is free. Our objective is to inform the public of the devastating impact of gender ideology on families through our personal experiences.

Quote of the Week from A Day in the Life of the club no one wants to join?": “The story is not over, even after the things that seem like the biggest lines-to-never-be-crossed, are crossed. It's never too late for our kids to come home, come back, to find their way to wholeness.”

PITT POSTS THIS WEEK:

Friday, May 22: California Has Installed Gender Ideology As Its State Religion

Thursday, May 21: A Day in the Life of the club no one wants to join?

Wednesday, May 20: Your Opinion, Please

Tuesday, May 19: My PRO HUMAN flag

Monday, May 18: Fear of hearing a fake name

TRANS COMEDY

Thanks to XX-XY Athletics for introducing podi-him and teaching girls that protecting boy’s feelings is more important then fairness.

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If residents don’t follow the strict commandments of gender ideology, they face severe legal consequences.

Gender ideology is often referred to as a quasi-religion, a cult, a social contagion. However, in many places, both worldwide and in the United States, gender ideology is effectively the state religion. Residents must abide by all the crazy beliefs and rules or risk breaking the law.

Is gender ideology a religion? It’s insulting to consider gender ideology as a religion in comparison to the world’s major religions, but there are some very strange, fringe religions in existence. Raëlism, founded in 1974, teaches that life on earth was created by aliens. Discordianism, founded in the 1960’s, promotes chaos and irony, centering on Eris, the Greek goddess of discord, and considers all humans to be individuals with the power to create their own reality. Followers of discordianism believe that Eris can act through mundane, random objects - often a toaster. There are many other fringe religions, including some that advocate self-harm in some form.

Gender ideology is similar to these fringe religions in that members of all these religions believe things that not only have no basis in reality, but also directly contradict easily provable established science and reality. Raëlians’ belief in extraterrestrials is countered by the fact that there is no credible proof of the existence of extraterrestrials. Discordian beliefs that toasters do anything other than toast bread are nonsense. Followers of gender ideology believe that it’s possible to have a “gender identity” that is different from their “sex assigned at birth”, although there is no credible evidence of a biological or scientific basis for this concept. Declaring that you are a boy in a girl’s body is an idea, a thought, ultimately a belief. And yet, the existence of boys in girls’ bodies (and vice versa) is the official state policy of many US states.

Worldwide, some societies have a state religion, which is officially endorsed and supported by the society’s government. In many of these places, not following the rules of the religion has dire consequences. Criticism of these religions is not allowed, and there are often strict dress requirements, but other rules are eerily familiar.

• The state religion must be taught in all schools. This religious education is a mandatory subject in both private and public schools, and students may not opt out of this instruction.

• Children must be raised in the traditions of the state religion at home. Failure to raise a child in these traditions can result in loss of custody of the child, and possible punishment of the parent(s).

• Religious laws must be followed, and typically there are laws regarding public behavior, worship of only the state religion, etc. Many countries have police organizations, often known as the “religious police”, that ensure public adherence to these laws.

Gender ideology, like other fringe religions, has beliefs that are provably false, and yet California, New York, and other blue states have laws in place similar to the laws in these countries with a state religion regarding the religion known as gender ideology. Consider:

• In California, under the FAIR Education Act and the California Healthy Youth Act, schools must teach about gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation starting in elementary school.

• In California, courts are required to consider a parent’s affirmation or lack of affirmation of a child’s “gender identity” in custody disputes. Also, a court may “affirm” a child’s identity and both non-affirming parents may lose custody of their child.

• In New York, intentional and repeated “misgendering” can be illegal in the state and is specifically prohibited in New York City.

Other blue states have similar restrictions, though it would appear that California and New York are the worst offenders. All residents of those states have thus had a fringe religion imposed on them. Gender ideology is taught in schools. If a child becomes a follower of gender ideology, parents can lose custody of their child if they don’t also become followers, an edict enforced by Child Protective Services, a police force comparable to the “religious police” of other countries, except that CPS has more power. A person’s declaration of their identity compels others to believe, and to ignore observable, provable facts, and to refer to the person as their declared identity. Sex-based laws and customs are considered secondary, obsolete and subservient to the self-declared concept of “gender.”

The constitutional rights of freedom of religion and freedom of speech have been trashed in blue states that have adopted gender ideology as their state religion.

As gender ideology is exposed as the fringe religion that it is, the number of people believing in gender ideology will continue to decline. However, there will always be a handful who still believe. What rights should the followers of gender ideology have? You often hear gender extremists screaming, “Trans rights are human rights”, but this is equivalent to saying, “Raëlism rights are human rights”, or “Discordianism rights are human rights”, because when it comes to rights, gender ideology is just another fringe religion. What gender extremists are really asking for is that gender ideology be installed as the state religion, with strict compliance required by all residents. The United States allows a lot of latitude when it comes to religious rights for different religions, but state religions are not allowed. If gender ideology is treated as a religion, then adult followers can have religious rights and believe whatever they want to believe, but followers don’t get to force their beliefs on others. Those followers must obey the same rules and laws that followers of all religions in the US must obey.

• No compelled belief - Followers cannot demand that everyone believe their metaphysical claims (“I’m a woman in a man’s body”).

• No compelled speech - Followers cannot require that everyone abide by made-up pronoun rules and usage of words that exist only in their ideology.

• No teaching of this religion (gender ideology) in public schools.

• No lying on official documents (Sex cannot be changed).

• No replacing sex-based laws and customs with laws and customs based on the self-declared, religious concept of "gender.”

• No doctor-assisted self-harm on minors - As self-harm is a major component of this religion, children must be protected.

Every religion in the United States follows these rules. As a religion, gender ideology is not entitled to special treatment.

There is another reason for exposing gender ideology as a fringe religion. Right now, being “trans” is, in some circles, still considered hip and edgy. But the reality is that being “trans” is just following the edicts of another fringe religion. Gender ideology is nothing special. Once kids realize that, gender ideology becomes boring and just weird and loses its appeal. As fringe religions go, Raëlism sounds like much more fun.

California and other blue states have installed gender ideology as their state religion in violation of the constitution. Those states must drop gender ideology as their state religion, reform their “religious police” forces (CPS), and pursue policies consistent with the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech. These states are in America, not in some foreign country with a state religion.