The anxiety that remains after the desistance of my daughter from nearly two years of trans identification is persistent, insistent, and consistent. An identity that was moulded by poor peer relations, bullying, online immersion, and professional grooming. Is she safe from this? Will she be drawn back in? How can we make this all stop? How did we get here?
I’m glad you wrote about your family’s experience at length. But I also think that everything in this essay after “The outside shell of trans” could use expansion and dissemination. You got to the heart of the problem here and this deserves a long and careful examination. Thank you!!
Thank you for your story. My amazing girl has already gone through a double mastectomy and sterilization. I am so angry. I have hope that some day my child seeks to be healthy, but it's dim. I want to help other parents whose children are seduced by this cult. I felt that I had no support. until I found PITT. Thank you for your story. Bless you all with the strength you need to recover from this.
Thank you for sharing your story. Utterly heart breaking and my heart aches for you, for us all. The sentence, ‘Beware of the fury of mothers’ hit the nail on the head. I will not rest or stop fighting until we are all out of this. Sending love to you.
Thank you for this thoughtful and actually rather uplifting piece. I am so glad your daughter found her way out of her confusion, and that you have even managed to strengthen the bonds in your family. Your thoughts on the gender industrial complex are also good. But I still don't fully understand the incentive structure for the spread of this ideology. It's clear that profit is the motive for surgeons, pharma, and hospitals, but what accounts for schools' eagerness to teach it to small children? What incentivises insurance companies to pay for the surgeries and the life-long medications?
Most people want to believe that they "are on the right side of history."
This was true of the "good Germans" who participated in Kristallnacht in 1938, it was true of some Americans in the south 20 years before that who sold lemonade at lynchings, and is true of the middle class Portlanders who turned out night after night to join a much smaller group of anarchists to shoot rockets at police and the federal courthouse.
Here in Oregon my chosen medical provider (and I have a choice) is Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) which has the most aggressive gender affirmation program in the nation. In this smallish state (4 million people) underage patients undergoing "gender affirming" mutilations soared from 16 in 2012 to over 700 last year.
This is brilliant and inspiring! Thank you so much for sharing and I am so glad your daughter is doing better.
You hit the nail right on the head. It’s a cult driven by narcissism-based mental illness, and it has infected the fields of psychology, education and medicine.
I am fortunate that my (homeschooled, no phones, supervised internet) teens are basically unaware of the trans movement. In summer of 2021, I invited my cousin’s daughter, whom I barely knew, for a weekend in Lake Tahoe since she was visiting the west coast. She brought a lady friend and I surmised that she was lesbian. No biggie. Without ever identifying herself further, she started bagging on her friend’s mom for asking the wrong questions about her “transition.” I was essentially unaware of the movement at that point, and felt very weird talking to my cousin’s daughter about sexuality. I tried to change the subject. For the rest of the weekend she essentially ditched me, and made rude and sarcastic comments at my expense. (Gees, last time I offer to pay for a room and a bunch of meals for a relative I barely know!) What stuck with me was how mentally ill she seemed. She just couldn’t even be cordial with someone unless she had a chance to fully explain, and be completely affirmed, in whatever she was going through. She was 19 years old, and was out west for a professional internship. But on the inside, she seemed to me to be a broken five year old throwing a massive tantrum.
She sounds similar to my daughters trans partner - a girl whose taking testosterone. A massive sulk and drama if anyone gets it wrong. Totally self absorbed.
Thank you for being so brutally honest about your own feelings you have felt, as I am feeling all those same feelings gs now. This is all encompassing and disabling all while still working and trying to go through days "normally" when really this is our torture. I am so happy for you and your daughter too and am very jealous as well. My heart breaks for my daughter as I know she struggles tremendously and so far asked for therapy, I've arranged two therapists in which she did not engage. Yet she is still saying she's trans. Definitely began in middle school after a class she attended at school. I would give anything to go back and have kept her home that day!
You pulled your daughter out of a swamp, congratulations! I do understand that you are still anxious though - the swamp is still all around you and none of us can rest until we dry out and pour concrete over the whole nasty ideological swamp. Hold your daughter close for now. Good luck!
So happy for you and your daughter that she desisted. I get that you are still affected by the experience. But I am jealous. My daughter will not be so lucky.
You are not alone. Some days I feel like I am drowning in hopelessness and just want to give in and give up. I have been suicidal. I don’t know how to face watching my baby ruin herself. All I can do is face one day at a time, 24 hours. I just try to get through the next 24 hours. That’s all I can do.
I am so sorry. From an internet stranger, I wish you peace.
My niece was briefly caught up in this craze... I have two daughters myself (tiny toddler and a wee babe) and, well: "Beware the fury of mothers." There are more people like me every day who will stand up to say "HELL no" to protect children just like yours.
You are going through trauma. Not a sudden violent event, but an ongoing traumatic nightmare. Jordan Peterson interviewed Dr. Miriam Grossman in the link below. Several times he interrupts with a question, but she counters with, "We can discuss that, but first let me make the point I was going towards." Her point was what I said in my first sentence here. Her concern is for the parents too, not just the poor delusional child. I was bawling while listening to this, but it was also a little cathartic, to hear this from a professional who understands.
This podcast hit me hard too! It was the first time I have heard anyone discuss the absolute horrific nightmare that parents go through when their kids fall into the trans cult.
Thankful that your daughter and family have dodged the Trans bullet here. For years medical professionals have stated that young people’s brains are not fully developed until around age 25. Common knowledge that young people are often impulsive, immature and sometimes engage in risky or other behaviour.
Yet we are allowing children as young as 5 to declare that they are a gender other than what they were born as. Or putting kids as young as 12 on cross sex hormones and making life altering surgical mutilation of their bodies barely into their teens. Utter madness.
Again I’m ashamed of so many in my profession (pediatrics) who have drunk the koolaid. For our next highly academic professional meeting in about a week, when you go on line to ‘sign in’ a pronoun identification question is asked. It’s not compulsory. Later in the program when speakers are identified by name, pronouns are listed for about 85%. (Dr Jones, he, him, his). It’s bizarre and awkward and idiotic. A form of extreme virtue signalling acquiescence to a cult of idiocy.
And that doesn’t include several sessions on this topic which I can easily predict will only push the so-called affirmative model. It’s a medical scandal.
I saw some terrific advice on how to handle this go by a couple of months ago on Twitter (unfortunately, I don't remember who said it):
Person #1:
I’m currently stanning one of the lesbians in my underground TERF group. She was asked to say her pronouns in a mandatory DEI meeting at work. She answered, “Oh, no thanks. I’m not religious.”
Apparently there were crickets in the room before quiet laughter. Then everyone else refused.
She’s telling me about it now, says the DEI consultant kept smiling at her when talking about “LGBTQ” topics. My friend is a butch lesbian in her mid-50s, fits every stereotype known to homophobes. Everyone at work knows she’s gay, she’s brought her wife to parties.
So she not only told the consultant about not being religious, she confronted her about why it’s considered inclusive to allow biological men to identify into lesbianism. Called this stealth homophobia and said she spent too long fighting the idea that she could change.
So I guess the consultant left early. My friend’s coworkers were overwhelmingly supportive. She could retire at any time, so is financially stable enough to endure loss of employment. But her boss and boss’ boss assured her they are on her side. And cancelled the DEI contract.
Everyone seems to be thanking her for speaking up. She doesn’t have a lot of female coworkers, but the ones she does are apparently relieved. All it took was one lesbian letting people know the “LGBTQ” doesn’t speak for her and that gender identity is a religion & homophobic.
Person #2:
I sent this to a friend and found out she'd faced the same last week. She was caught unprepared in a zoom meeting. At her turn, she just said her name then where she's from (as though everyone was doing "fun facts" about themselves). Others followed her lead!
I was delighted when in a zoom meeting someone suggested we all add pronouns to our signature and the response was... crickets. We then just moved on to something relevant
It's so strange to have always lived as a pretty mainstream Liberal and to suddenly feel like I'm in a sci fi movie in which almost all humans have been replaced by brainwashed robots and no institutions can be trusted. Thank you for your story and for reminding all of us that we're not insane. Congratulations on helping your daughter out of this cult. May things continue to improve for your family.
I am a progressive liberal and remain one. Transgenderism comes from a looney left fringe and it is disappointing that liberal politicians have been supportive of it out of a misguided fear of offending their gay and lesbian constituents. However, classic liberalism is about facts, reason, and science so ultimately, in the long run, transgenderism is going to fade away just like the social contagion of the 'day care child abuse' panic of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Transgenderism will someday join Creationism, anti-vaccination conspiracies, global warming denialism, etc. on the ash heap of history because they all contradict basic, proven science. But getting there is going to be a long, arduous haul.
The transgenderist lobby isn't political. It's opportunistic.
James N Pritzker is a Trumpster multimillionaire who has financed every Republican Presidential candidate of the past 30 years. He's spent a great deal of money on the transgenderist lobby and gave Trump a quarter of a million dollars, expecting him to push transgenderism. (He apparently didn't notice that Trump is too stupid to follow instructions.) Pritzker even bought himself a $2-million spot on the board of the University of Victoria, in the capital city of BC, from which he can very successfully push transgenderism on the BC government.
Transgenderism was first introduced to the governments of both Canada and the UK by conservatives. The first transgenderist politician in BC is a conservative. One study showed that transgenderists themselves are more politically conservative than liberal. After all, transsexualism is a conservative male reaction to gender stereotypes.
The transgenderist lobby simply switched to buying influence in liberal governments when it became obvious that liberal governments are the current powers that be in the Western world.
Jennifer Bilek publishes her research into the money behind this lobby on her blog: http://the11thhourblog.com
Your comment ignores the decades of this creeping to normal life. Watch James Lindsay/New Discourses. Gender Studies is not conservative. Gender Theory which is Critical Theory is not conservative.
Your comment ignores the fact that transsexualism is a conservative male reaction to sexist gender stereotypes, why has indeed been poisoning normal life for the rest of us for thousands of years. I'm not going to discuss conservativism with you, because you're nothing but an apologist for all the worst aspects of it. So go ahead and keep your ego brain to yourself.
You're still ignoring the fact that the origins of this is through critical theory. Through gender theory. Through gender studies. By a whole lot of women. You're also ignoring that there is a ton of women who claim to be transgender now too.
None of these things have anything to do with the right.
Very interesting, thank you. When I think of Pritzker, of course, I think of the liberal governor of Illinois ... who I now see is a cousin of James Pritzker.
We need to become flat-out abusive towards trans activists. They have to learn that sadistic child abuse is not acceptable.
I’m glad you wrote about your family’s experience at length. But I also think that everything in this essay after “The outside shell of trans” could use expansion and dissemination. You got to the heart of the problem here and this deserves a long and careful examination. Thank you!!
Thank you for your story. My amazing girl has already gone through a double mastectomy and sterilization. I am so angry. I have hope that some day my child seeks to be healthy, but it's dim. I want to help other parents whose children are seduced by this cult. I felt that I had no support. until I found PITT. Thank you for your story. Bless you all with the strength you need to recover from this.
Thank you for sharing your story. Utterly heart breaking and my heart aches for you, for us all. The sentence, ‘Beware of the fury of mothers’ hit the nail on the head. I will not rest or stop fighting until we are all out of this. Sending love to you.
Brilliant, thanks so much
Thank you for this thoughtful and actually rather uplifting piece. I am so glad your daughter found her way out of her confusion, and that you have even managed to strengthen the bonds in your family. Your thoughts on the gender industrial complex are also good. But I still don't fully understand the incentive structure for the spread of this ideology. It's clear that profit is the motive for surgeons, pharma, and hospitals, but what accounts for schools' eagerness to teach it to small children? What incentivises insurance companies to pay for the surgeries and the life-long medications?
Most people want to believe that they "are on the right side of history."
This was true of the "good Germans" who participated in Kristallnacht in 1938, it was true of some Americans in the south 20 years before that who sold lemonade at lynchings, and is true of the middle class Portlanders who turned out night after night to join a much smaller group of anarchists to shoot rockets at police and the federal courthouse.
Here in Oregon my chosen medical provider (and I have a choice) is Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) which has the most aggressive gender affirmation program in the nation. In this smallish state (4 million people) underage patients undergoing "gender affirming" mutilations soared from 16 in 2012 to over 700 last year.
That is utterly SHOCKING.
This is brilliant and inspiring! Thank you so much for sharing and I am so glad your daughter is doing better.
You hit the nail right on the head. It’s a cult driven by narcissism-based mental illness, and it has infected the fields of psychology, education and medicine.
I am fortunate that my (homeschooled, no phones, supervised internet) teens are basically unaware of the trans movement. In summer of 2021, I invited my cousin’s daughter, whom I barely knew, for a weekend in Lake Tahoe since she was visiting the west coast. She brought a lady friend and I surmised that she was lesbian. No biggie. Without ever identifying herself further, she started bagging on her friend’s mom for asking the wrong questions about her “transition.” I was essentially unaware of the movement at that point, and felt very weird talking to my cousin’s daughter about sexuality. I tried to change the subject. For the rest of the weekend she essentially ditched me, and made rude and sarcastic comments at my expense. (Gees, last time I offer to pay for a room and a bunch of meals for a relative I barely know!) What stuck with me was how mentally ill she seemed. She just couldn’t even be cordial with someone unless she had a chance to fully explain, and be completely affirmed, in whatever she was going through. She was 19 years old, and was out west for a professional internship. But on the inside, she seemed to me to be a broken five year old throwing a massive tantrum.
She sounds similar to my daughters trans partner - a girl whose taking testosterone. A massive sulk and drama if anyone gets it wrong. Totally self absorbed.
Thank you for being so brutally honest about your own feelings you have felt, as I am feeling all those same feelings gs now. This is all encompassing and disabling all while still working and trying to go through days "normally" when really this is our torture. I am so happy for you and your daughter too and am very jealous as well. My heart breaks for my daughter as I know she struggles tremendously and so far asked for therapy, I've arranged two therapists in which she did not engage. Yet she is still saying she's trans. Definitely began in middle school after a class she attended at school. I would give anything to go back and have kept her home that day!
You pulled your daughter out of a swamp, congratulations! I do understand that you are still anxious though - the swamp is still all around you and none of us can rest until we dry out and pour concrete over the whole nasty ideological swamp. Hold your daughter close for now. Good luck!
Amazing Article from the Epoch Times!
Please share, Our frontliners are pitured!
Thanks to All whi Are Standing Against Gov. Child Abuse!
IN-DEPTH: Researchers Find Explosion of Youth Gender Dysphoria Over the Last Decade https://www.theepochtimes.com/researchers-find-explosion-of-youth-gender-dysphoria-over-the-last-decade_5180193.html?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=navigator&rs=SHRCVJXXW&
So happy for you and your daughter that she desisted. I get that you are still affected by the experience. But I am jealous. My daughter will not be so lucky.
Mine either. I feel so hopeless. I’m so sorry for our daughters.
You are not alone. Some days I feel like I am drowning in hopelessness and just want to give in and give up. I have been suicidal. I don’t know how to face watching my baby ruin herself. All I can do is face one day at a time, 24 hours. I just try to get through the next 24 hours. That’s all I can do.
I am so sorry. From an internet stranger, I wish you peace.
My niece was briefly caught up in this craze... I have two daughters myself (tiny toddler and a wee babe) and, well: "Beware the fury of mothers." There are more people like me every day who will stand up to say "HELL no" to protect children just like yours.
You are going through trauma. Not a sudden violent event, but an ongoing traumatic nightmare. Jordan Peterson interviewed Dr. Miriam Grossman in the link below. Several times he interrupts with a question, but she counters with, "We can discuss that, but first let me make the point I was going towards." Her point was what I said in my first sentence here. Her concern is for the parents too, not just the poor delusional child. I was bawling while listening to this, but it was also a little cathartic, to hear this from a professional who understands.
https://youtu.be/Su2Z4_iQHz4
Have some tissues handy.
Thank you for sharing
This podcast hit me hard too! It was the first time I have heard anyone discuss the absolute horrific nightmare that parents go through when their kids fall into the trans cult.
Thankful that your daughter and family have dodged the Trans bullet here. For years medical professionals have stated that young people’s brains are not fully developed until around age 25. Common knowledge that young people are often impulsive, immature and sometimes engage in risky or other behaviour.
Yet we are allowing children as young as 5 to declare that they are a gender other than what they were born as. Or putting kids as young as 12 on cross sex hormones and making life altering surgical mutilation of their bodies barely into their teens. Utter madness.
Again I’m ashamed of so many in my profession (pediatrics) who have drunk the koolaid. For our next highly academic professional meeting in about a week, when you go on line to ‘sign in’ a pronoun identification question is asked. It’s not compulsory. Later in the program when speakers are identified by name, pronouns are listed for about 85%. (Dr Jones, he, him, his). It’s bizarre and awkward and idiotic. A form of extreme virtue signalling acquiescence to a cult of idiocy.
Unbelievable.
And that doesn’t include several sessions on this topic which I can easily predict will only push the so-called affirmative model. It’s a medical scandal.
I saw some terrific advice on how to handle this go by a couple of months ago on Twitter (unfortunately, I don't remember who said it):
Person #1:
I’m currently stanning one of the lesbians in my underground TERF group. She was asked to say her pronouns in a mandatory DEI meeting at work. She answered, “Oh, no thanks. I’m not religious.”
Apparently there were crickets in the room before quiet laughter. Then everyone else refused.
She’s telling me about it now, says the DEI consultant kept smiling at her when talking about “LGBTQ” topics. My friend is a butch lesbian in her mid-50s, fits every stereotype known to homophobes. Everyone at work knows she’s gay, she’s brought her wife to parties.
So she not only told the consultant about not being religious, she confronted her about why it’s considered inclusive to allow biological men to identify into lesbianism. Called this stealth homophobia and said she spent too long fighting the idea that she could change.
So I guess the consultant left early. My friend’s coworkers were overwhelmingly supportive. She could retire at any time, so is financially stable enough to endure loss of employment. But her boss and boss’ boss assured her they are on her side. And cancelled the DEI contract.
Everyone seems to be thanking her for speaking up. She doesn’t have a lot of female coworkers, but the ones she does are apparently relieved. All it took was one lesbian letting people know the “LGBTQ” doesn’t speak for her and that gender identity is a religion & homophobic.
Person #2:
I sent this to a friend and found out she'd faced the same last week. She was caught unprepared in a zoom meeting. At her turn, she just said her name then where she's from (as though everyone was doing "fun facts" about themselves). Others followed her lead!
I was delighted when in a zoom meeting someone suggested we all add pronouns to our signature and the response was... crickets. We then just moved on to something relevant
Right?
No one wants to be kidnapped into this cult, especially not at work.
It's so strange to have always lived as a pretty mainstream Liberal and to suddenly feel like I'm in a sci fi movie in which almost all humans have been replaced by brainwashed robots and no institutions can be trusted. Thank you for your story and for reminding all of us that we're not insane. Congratulations on helping your daughter out of this cult. May things continue to improve for your family.
I am a progressive liberal and remain one. Transgenderism comes from a looney left fringe and it is disappointing that liberal politicians have been supportive of it out of a misguided fear of offending their gay and lesbian constituents. However, classic liberalism is about facts, reason, and science so ultimately, in the long run, transgenderism is going to fade away just like the social contagion of the 'day care child abuse' panic of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Transgenderism will someday join Creationism, anti-vaccination conspiracies, global warming denialism, etc. on the ash heap of history because they all contradict basic, proven science. But getting there is going to be a long, arduous haul.
It's not even from the left.
The transgenderist lobby isn't political. It's opportunistic.
James N Pritzker is a Trumpster multimillionaire who has financed every Republican Presidential candidate of the past 30 years. He's spent a great deal of money on the transgenderist lobby and gave Trump a quarter of a million dollars, expecting him to push transgenderism. (He apparently didn't notice that Trump is too stupid to follow instructions.) Pritzker even bought himself a $2-million spot on the board of the University of Victoria, in the capital city of BC, from which he can very successfully push transgenderism on the BC government.
Transgenderism was first introduced to the governments of both Canada and the UK by conservatives. The first transgenderist politician in BC is a conservative. One study showed that transgenderists themselves are more politically conservative than liberal. After all, transsexualism is a conservative male reaction to gender stereotypes.
The transgenderist lobby simply switched to buying influence in liberal governments when it became obvious that liberal governments are the current powers that be in the Western world.
Jennifer Bilek publishes her research into the money behind this lobby on her blog: http://the11thhourblog.com
Your comment ignores the decades of this creeping to normal life. Watch James Lindsay/New Discourses. Gender Studies is not conservative. Gender Theory which is Critical Theory is not conservative.
Your comment ignores the fact that transsexualism is a conservative male reaction to sexist gender stereotypes, why has indeed been poisoning normal life for the rest of us for thousands of years. I'm not going to discuss conservativism with you, because you're nothing but an apologist for all the worst aspects of it. So go ahead and keep your ego brain to yourself.
You're still ignoring the fact that the origins of this is through critical theory. Through gender theory. Through gender studies. By a whole lot of women. You're also ignoring that there is a ton of women who claim to be transgender now too.
None of these things have anything to do with the right.
Literally nobody on this thread cares what you think, ego brain.
Very interesting, thank you. When I think of Pritzker, of course, I think of the liberal governor of Illinois ... who I now see is a cousin of James Pritzker.
You're welcome. Yes, the Pritzkers are a big, filthy-rich family.
But I've been insulted here by conservatives who don't want to believe there is a Trumpster Pritzker. As if. :/
Going to join the recovered memory cult and the day care witches coven scandals of the 1990s.
I wrote a piece for PITT about my experiences with the Satanic panic: https://open.substack.com/pub/pitt/p/moral-panics-of-our-time-the-satanic
I'm so happy to learn that your beautiful daughter is climbing out of the hole that was dug for her by unscrupulous adults. This level of brainwashing is unfortunately all too common: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/how-to-establish-a-new-reality-aka