My main problem with society's and gender-affirming providers' narrative around parents not accepting "gender" transitions is the belief we don't love or accept our children as they are. This belief dismisses our concerns which would be LAUDED if the same medical outcomes occurred under any different circumstance. We love our children unconditionally. We do not stop loving them when they state they need nor when they start hormones. We don't want our 18-year-old sons to be neutered. We believe a functional sex life (with expected abilities given their sex as paramount) provides a level of intimacy, emotional connection and personal fulfillment with a partner that is very difficult to replace. Usually this happens early in a relationship. What happens now? We also believe the ability to procreate should not be removed before they become a fully functioning adult (and then only after they have truly understood how they and hopefully their partner feel about having children). This outrage does not impact how much we love them or respect them (despite the fact that we do not respect this "choice" ... ).
Nobody deserves to live in the gaslight of the relationships the trans identified expect us to. It's a very hard band-aid to pull but if your son is still in your life and trans identified, you've almost certainly not said the things that you need to let alone the things you want to. I know you aren't looking for it but my advice is to say them, it'll be either a trigger to get him to escape from the cult or do what is otherwise inevitable - cut you out of his life. A copy of the PITT book is a good way to say almost everything they need to hear.
Everybody has conditions about who they love, silly, even you because without them you can't love at all. What is it that one could love if nothing about the target mattered? All anyone could have is indifference.
Gd bless you mom. As a therapist who provides therapy (not GAC) to parents/families & young people grappling with “identity issues”, I find your writing expressing confusion, deep love & commitment, bewilderment, fear, uncertainty quite representative. Please seek out your people.
My 22 yo son tells me he’s a lesbian now. His new “girlfriend” Scarlet will be moving here to be with him. “She” doesn’t have a job. He asked would I come to his wedding he marries a trans girl.
There are too many absurdities. I can’t even respond.
I pray- pray-pray. I go to counseling. I walk around completely gutted. I pray some more.
I agree with this author and I will add what I read yesterday on X below as she describes a video of Elliot Page. Also Stephanie Will @sometherapist did a great podcast yesterday that was very helpful...
from: @Psychgirl211
Years ago, I did work with people who had complex PTSD.
One was a Kurdish woman who described seeing her own foot getting blown off by a bomb.
Their body language was very similar to this. (Especially with the volume off).
There's so much 'leakage' here, the most obvious being the constant head-shaking. She's literally communicating "no, no, no" all the way through, negating every word coming out of her mouth.
I would bet anything she's got a little 'film' of her abuse, playing in her head on a constant loop.
And every time she looks at her destroyed chest that abuse is not merely remembered but re-experieced, somatically, psychologically, and emotionally.
So, there is now double trauma. The initial abuse, plus 'transition trauma', which is ongoing and continuous.
The difference with 'Elliot', unlike the survivors of trauma with whom I've worked (including the Kurdish woman), is that she did the latter to herself. Deliberately, consciously, and knowingly.
Therefore, there's no way out for her. The normal ways of deactivating a trauma response won't work. And she cannot admit her 'transition' hasn't alleviated her distress because she would be crucified.
'Elliot' is in her own private hell of double trauma. It's written all over her face.
This is only going to end one way. She knows it. We all know it.
This is an appalling modern tragedy, but what is inexcusable is that 'Elliot' is now deliberately dragging countless other young women down into Hell with her.
I've been weak and angrily stated my opinion. I wish I'd done things differently but water is under the bridge. My overall shock at the state of treatments are drastic permanent drug and surgical treatments for a psychological issue as a first resort.
The treatment providers don't read any of the trans activist forums. Everyone in puberty who doesn't like the changes is trans. If they doubt it, that just means internalized transphobia.
Thank you for sharing. What a beautiful, heart wrenching story. I too wish to wake up realizing it was all a nightmare. If only they understood how much of our hearts they posess.
Thank you for writing this. They are quite beautiful, still in their costumes. They will always be our cherished little ones. I don't affirm either, mine a daughter now 18, and I should be repulsed by what she is trying to look like but we are still connecting. It is in the eyes - her eyes light up when authentic connection makes her feel seen, understood and admired for who she is right now, not what she looks like. I just can't help but adore her and I forget to deliver any cautionary advice. Most likely God's plan though as me talking about it as much as I think about it (and research it) would kill the relationship. Every morning I wake up hoping this isn't real. I am exhausted but I have to keep praying (for all of us) as I wait for her autistic brain to mature.
Suicide and trans kids: The Rainbow Mafia insists that failure to affirm a confused child's "transgender" identity is tantamount to wishing death upon them. Activists claim that should these gender dysphoric youth not be allowed to "transition," then suicide awaits. However, a recently released study is now throwing cold water all over that dubious claim. Actually, it's worse than that. The National Institutes of Health and the University of Texas looked at the life impact of "gender-affirming" surgery. The study reviewed data from more than 90 million patients and found that the rate of attempted suicide was 12 times higher in individuals who received gender-mutilating surgeries. The lie of the gender-bender cult is actually leading to even more suicides, not fewer. This makes sense because gender dysphoria is a mental illness that physical mutilation of the body will not fix. It turns out that transing the kids is leading to higher rates of suicide.
This is not a well designed study and is mostly useless. The investigators used data consisting of people who went to the ER (for any reason). They selected from the 90 million ER patients a group of people who went through GAC then measured the suicide rate in that group. This suicide rate of the GAC group was compared to a group who did not have GAC (we know nothing about whether they had gender issues), and a second group who did not have GAC but had one of several minor surgeries (we know nothing about this group either regarding gender diagnoses). The rate of suicides in the GAC group was higher than in either of the other groups.
It is known that people who undertake GAC often have comorbid psychiatric disorders, such as Major Depressive Disorder, that are associated with elevated risks of suicide. Better control groups would include patients who had a history of diagnosed gender dysphoria but did not go through GAC, patients who had GD diagnoses but went through mental health treatment instead of GAC, and patients who did not have gender diagnoses but did have psychiatric conditions similar to those diagnosed in the GAC patients. None of this information about the patients was available to the investigators.
About all we can conclude from the above study is that GAC did not prevent suicide in all people who received that treatment. We can't even conclude that GAC was ineffective in lowering the suicide rate in those people because we don't know what it would have been had this group not had the GAC. (Maybe it would have been worse).
This short-term US follow-up (two years) illustrates the hazards of relying on self-assessments. The kids said they had fewer suicidal thoughts after beginning the transition, but their rate of actual suicide attempts jumped:
This retrospective study on nine years of US healthcare data shows that kids showed no decrease in mental healthcare utilization, and were prescribed psychotropic meds more often after transition than before:
All of the above was picked up from the comment section of the Washington Post in response to the tragic suicide of a trans-identified teenager in Oklahoma.
TRANSGENDER MAN APPLIES FOR VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA IN CANADA, CAN’T STAND THE PAIN ANY LONGER
I’ve always thought that even without the data. Having been touched by suicide twice in my life I can’t fathom the rationale that cutting your healthy body to fit a mental state will not create life ending regret. 😞
I am crying for you because I feel it. I’m experiencing it with my daughter who wants to transition so badly.
I have similar views as yours; she will always be my daughter no matter what; always loved to the moon and back. God help us.
Beautifully written story of the pain we all feel. I'm praying for your family - all of our families.
My main problem with society's and gender-affirming providers' narrative around parents not accepting "gender" transitions is the belief we don't love or accept our children as they are. This belief dismisses our concerns which would be LAUDED if the same medical outcomes occurred under any different circumstance. We love our children unconditionally. We do not stop loving them when they state they need nor when they start hormones. We don't want our 18-year-old sons to be neutered. We believe a functional sex life (with expected abilities given their sex as paramount) provides a level of intimacy, emotional connection and personal fulfillment with a partner that is very difficult to replace. Usually this happens early in a relationship. What happens now? We also believe the ability to procreate should not be removed before they become a fully functioning adult (and then only after they have truly understood how they and hopefully their partner feel about having children). This outrage does not impact how much we love them or respect them (despite the fact that we do not respect this "choice" ... ).
Exactly! No one ever considers our children's sex lives! It's outrageous!
you people need serious psychiatric help
why is that?
Nobody deserves to live in the gaslight of the relationships the trans identified expect us to. It's a very hard band-aid to pull but if your son is still in your life and trans identified, you've almost certainly not said the things that you need to let alone the things you want to. I know you aren't looking for it but my advice is to say them, it'll be either a trigger to get him to escape from the cult or do what is otherwise inevitable - cut you out of his life. A copy of the PITT book is a good way to say almost everything they need to hear.
Everybody has conditions about who they love, silly, even you because without them you can't love at all. What is it that one could love if nothing about the target mattered? All anyone could have is indifference.
"I will be there for you but only if you do exactly what I want all the time."
Lmao you are a loser and a terrible mother. If your love and acceptance are conditional, they don't exist.
what do you mean?
Gd bless you mom. As a therapist who provides therapy (not GAC) to parents/families & young people grappling with “identity issues”, I find your writing expressing confusion, deep love & commitment, bewilderment, fear, uncertainty quite representative. Please seek out your people.
Beautifully expressed. You capture so well the pain and contradictions parents, particularly mothers, feel.
My 22 yo son tells me he’s a lesbian now. His new “girlfriend” Scarlet will be moving here to be with him. “She” doesn’t have a job. He asked would I come to his wedding he marries a trans girl.
There are too many absurdities. I can’t even respond.
I pray- pray-pray. I go to counseling. I walk around completely gutted. I pray some more.
"I will be there, if I have to cross the ocean seven times over."
THIS! This is exactly how I feel about my lost child, 4 years gone now...
I agree with this author and I will add what I read yesterday on X below as she describes a video of Elliot Page. Also Stephanie Will @sometherapist did a great podcast yesterday that was very helpful...
from: @Psychgirl211
Years ago, I did work with people who had complex PTSD.
One was a Kurdish woman who described seeing her own foot getting blown off by a bomb.
Their body language was very similar to this. (Especially with the volume off).
There's so much 'leakage' here, the most obvious being the constant head-shaking. She's literally communicating "no, no, no" all the way through, negating every word coming out of her mouth.
I would bet anything she's got a little 'film' of her abuse, playing in her head on a constant loop.
And every time she looks at her destroyed chest that abuse is not merely remembered but re-experieced, somatically, psychologically, and emotionally.
So, there is now double trauma. The initial abuse, plus 'transition trauma', which is ongoing and continuous.
The difference with 'Elliot', unlike the survivors of trauma with whom I've worked (including the Kurdish woman), is that she did the latter to herself. Deliberately, consciously, and knowingly.
Therefore, there's no way out for her. The normal ways of deactivating a trauma response won't work. And she cannot admit her 'transition' hasn't alleviated her distress because she would be crucified.
'Elliot' is in her own private hell of double trauma. It's written all over her face.
This is only going to end one way. She knows it. We all know it.
This is an appalling modern tragedy, but what is inexcusable is that 'Elliot' is now deliberately dragging countless other young women down into Hell with her.
That is unforgettable.
The latest BIG study on SUICIDES after medical "transition"... :( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11063965/
Ooooooh! So wrenching to read. What else can we do but love them in this craziness? The world is a mess.😞
I've been weak and angrily stated my opinion. I wish I'd done things differently but water is under the bridge. My overall shock at the state of treatments are drastic permanent drug and surgical treatments for a psychological issue as a first resort.
The treatment providers don't read any of the trans activist forums. Everyone in puberty who doesn't like the changes is trans. If they doubt it, that just means internalized transphobia.
Thank you for sharing. What a beautiful, heart wrenching story. I too wish to wake up realizing it was all a nightmare. If only they understood how much of our hearts they posess.
Thank you for writing this. They are quite beautiful, still in their costumes. They will always be our cherished little ones. I don't affirm either, mine a daughter now 18, and I should be repulsed by what she is trying to look like but we are still connecting. It is in the eyes - her eyes light up when authentic connection makes her feel seen, understood and admired for who she is right now, not what she looks like. I just can't help but adore her and I forget to deliver any cautionary advice. Most likely God's plan though as me talking about it as much as I think about it (and research it) would kill the relationship. Every morning I wake up hoping this isn't real. I am exhausted but I have to keep praying (for all of us) as I wait for her autistic brain to mature.
This is me too. I'm so grateful to still be connected, I don't say anything that might frighten my little bird away.
Me too just like you!!❤️❤️
From today's PATRIOT POST
Suicide and trans kids: The Rainbow Mafia insists that failure to affirm a confused child's "transgender" identity is tantamount to wishing death upon them. Activists claim that should these gender dysphoric youth not be allowed to "transition," then suicide awaits. However, a recently released study is now throwing cold water all over that dubious claim. Actually, it's worse than that. The National Institutes of Health and the University of Texas looked at the life impact of "gender-affirming" surgery. The study reviewed data from more than 90 million patients and found that the rate of attempted suicide was 12 times higher in individuals who received gender-mutilating surgeries. The lie of the gender-bender cult is actually leading to even more suicides, not fewer. This makes sense because gender dysphoria is a mental illness that physical mutilation of the body will not fix. It turns out that transing the kids is leading to higher rates of suicide.
" 90 million patients"?
Do you have a link to this study, or review, or whatever it is?
Thanks.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11063965/
This is not a well designed study and is mostly useless. The investigators used data consisting of people who went to the ER (for any reason). They selected from the 90 million ER patients a group of people who went through GAC then measured the suicide rate in that group. This suicide rate of the GAC group was compared to a group who did not have GAC (we know nothing about whether they had gender issues), and a second group who did not have GAC but had one of several minor surgeries (we know nothing about this group either regarding gender diagnoses). The rate of suicides in the GAC group was higher than in either of the other groups.
It is known that people who undertake GAC often have comorbid psychiatric disorders, such as Major Depressive Disorder, that are associated with elevated risks of suicide. Better control groups would include patients who had a history of diagnosed gender dysphoria but did not go through GAC, patients who had GD diagnoses but went through mental health treatment instead of GAC, and patients who did not have gender diagnoses but did have psychiatric conditions similar to those diagnosed in the GAC patients. None of this information about the patients was available to the investigators.
About all we can conclude from the above study is that GAC did not prevent suicide in all people who received that treatment. We can't even conclude that GAC was ineffective in lowering the suicide rate in those people because we don't know what it would have been had this group not had the GAC. (Maybe it would have been worse).
This was from that day's PATRIOT POST which I no longer have.
But I can give you other links...
Sweden: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
Denmark: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2806531
This long-term Danish follow-up study showed that mental health diagnoses and prescription med usage did not improve post-transition: https://academic.oup.com/ejendo/article-abstract/189/3/336/7261571
This short-term US follow-up (two years) illustrates the hazards of relying on self-assessments. The kids said they had fewer suicidal thoughts after beginning the transition, but their rate of actual suicide attempts jumped:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
This retrospective study on nine years of US healthcare data shows that kids showed no decrease in mental healthcare utilization, and were prescribed psychotropic meds more often after transition than before:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34247956/
All of the above was picked up from the comment section of the Washington Post in response to the tragic suicide of a trans-identified teenager in Oklahoma.
TRANSGENDER MAN APPLIES FOR VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA IN CANADA, CAN’T STAND THE PAIN ANY LONGER
https://roccistuccishow.com/transgender-man-applies-for-voluntary-euthanasia-in-canada-cant-stand-the-pain-any-longer/
Exclusive: Prominent trans surgeon admits in unearthed video that complications of genital surgery ‘can be pretty bad’
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/02/15/exclusive-prominent-trans-surgeon-admits-in-unearthed-video-that-complications-of-genital-surgery-can-be-pretty-bad-1437336/
Thanks- will check out the links
I’ve always thought that even without the data. Having been touched by suicide twice in my life I can’t fathom the rationale that cutting your healthy body to fit a mental state will not create life ending regret. 😞