As in every war there are people swept up in what is euphemistically called “collateral damage.” In demolishing so many lives without an iota of thought to the long-term repercussions, the trans-cult has made a serious tactical mistake: they created too many of us.
I have started to volunteer and work with advocate protecting children from gender ideology. It’s a great group along with LGB courage Coalition and Democrats against gender ideology.
Oh boy, this one hurt, like picking off an old scab, yesterday I was walking and thinking and I just had a moment of rage and I wanted to yell at every person, every neighbor, everyone of my daughters friends and their family, and my daughters teachers, and counselors, and doctors and everyone who affirmed this delusion that if only she took testosterone and removed her breasts she would be a man, as I type this I feel the rage in me, I am so angry at so many people who could not just say......No....;;; -(. Thanks, a lot all of you who could not do that, as I fold into a ball of yarn and fade away with my oldest daughter completely maimed and hurting, her life forever changed for the worse. God help us all, my only source of hope is Jesus to get me through all of this. UGHHHHHH!!!! "pulled down every tradition, every family vacation, every high school prom, every holiday, every joyous memory - as this one sibling sucked all of the air out of the loving family leaving an empty shell of people trying to hold it together in the wake of" trans.
This is the most total and gut wrenching explanation of our shared experience I have yet read! And I feel exactly the same... Though scared, my wounds are healing and I rise daily preparing to continue the battle until All our children are freed and return home! But also realizing, for the rest of our lives we will have to deal with the aftermath of this violence they have suffered!
For the first time ever, I am banned from reading this article because of the UK’s so-called ‘Online Safety Act’. Sadly, I cannot post this on X (twitter) & help to spread the invaluable work of Pitt Parents in their crusade against the evil trans cult. America, keep freedom alive; the western world needs you.
I would be in so much trouble if I lived in the UK! Grateful to live in the USA and many of us are Freedom Fighters...Free Speech is the only way Truth comes out!
Spot on, but thank God this recovering alcoholic mom isn’t drinking over this BS. If I succumbed to affirming and going along with the lie just to keep the peace, I would probably be drunk. To thine own self be true.
Incidentally, AlAnon principles help me a lot with dealing with my trans-identifying child. I definitely don’t have to like or condone it. But I accept that there’s nothing I can do to change her now-adult (but still sick) mind. And then I do my best to live with grace and dignity. May God bless and strengthen all of us trying to navigate this without self destructing.
“Moms who know with certainty that they did something wrong”
And the amount of mental energy and resources and research just to send a text is unbelievable. I’ve spent so many days and hours on a few lines of text to my child.
I wish so much for all of us to be seen and heard. 💔 Thank you all.
I used to always watch my weight. Watching carefully what I eat, counting calories, taking care of my image. I feel I can't anymore I just eat and eat without even thinking I just don't care anymore I miss my baby, my baby that was born a boy I miss him so much
I know that pain. It helps me to pray the rosary as it gives me 20 minutes of peace. I pray for all young men caught up in this cult, including your dear son.
You must take care of your health... physical, mental and emotional! You can't help your son in the future if you don't! Focus on Christ! I believe God has a plan to heal, deliver and bring our children, His children home!
Read Daniel 4: 25-35
I am praying the Kings story becomes the story for all our children!
Please understand, you have to look after yourself. You don’t have to count calories but you do have to choose healthy, whole food. I suggest you go on a ketogenic or a carnivore diet.
If you are choosing to eat high carbohydrate, it will hurt you. Really hurt.
If you take care of yourself, there is a future with some good in it for you.
I suggest you might need counseling to help you. The eating problem is fixable, but you might need to be coached what to eat. It does not mean counting calories but it does mean choosing the right foods.
Please be sure to keep an eye on your health. It's okay to not be skinny. Women are naturally many shapes, generally the same shapes as their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Just please don't turn this grief into self-harm.
Think about what other comfort activities you can indulge in: reading, sleeping, exercising, a hobby. Anything, so long as it doesn't turn against you.
Your mental health depends upon you staying healthy.
I think I'm getting there little by little, my taking care of myself. I work full time and I just got my Real Estate license I think studying helped me to keep my mind busy. I will try to ho back to exercising it helps a lot Thank you 💜
but everyday I ask myself: how can I help my child? and I find no answer. Because there's such a huge array of people who "affirm" and "celebrate" and teach our trans kids to hate their parents.
So, my kid has been taught to hate and fear me. How can I help my child who can't begin to see my love?
Hey Alex, I know you're pretty deep into this so you might ignore everything I say, but I thought it was worth a shot.
I'm trans. I'm not your kid, but I might be similar to your kid. I don't hate my parents. We love each other, and we try to have a healthy relationship despite the fact that they don't approve of my lifestyle. Would I prefer it if they affirmed me? Of course. But parents have taken issue with their kids' radical new lifestyles since the dawn of time, so it is what it is.
I'm also a recent college graduate, and was heavily involved with my university's queer frat, so I've heard a lot about trans students' conflicts with their families. I can't speak for everyone everywhere, but there was no cultural norm at my frat of encouraging people to hate their parents. People generally give advice on how to reconcile with your parents. Many kids desperately wanted to reconcile with their parents. They didn't mind too much if their parents wouldn't use their pronouns, as long as their parents didn't turn every conversation into a chance to berate them about their hairstyle.
Not all family conflicts were over transness. Sometimes it was because the kid was gay, or polyamorous, or dating a black guy (yes, really), or a thousand things that weren't related to gender and sexuality at all. These different conflicts tended to play out in similar ways, because they're motivated by the same anxieties. Your kid doesn't want the life you wanted for them. They're stepping into a brave new world that seems weird and scary and repulsive. It's normal to be worried and disappointed, and you don't have to drop all of your opinions and blindly agree with every choice they make, but... you can be a fucking human being.
Just talk to your kid. Accept that you have your disagreements, set your boundaries on what pronouns you use if that bothers you so much, but don't let this destroy any chance of having a relationship with your child. Your relationship matters more than this.
And to any lurkers that are on the fence about this forum: You don't feel comfortable with your kid's radical new lifestyle, you don't fit in among the "affirm and celebrate parents", that's understandable. But do you really think this is the place where you'll get neutral, unbiased information? You know your child. You know they're not crazy or stupid, and you know they love you. Please don't let a Substack post convince you otherwise. Just be a human.
I'm praying for you, dear one. But, you need to be clear that parents are 'turning everything into a fight' because they are worried sick about you. They are shaking in fear that the hormones will cause heart damage, osteoporosis, infertility, dementia, and early death. They are frightened about the monstrous surgeries being offered to you by unethical doctors promising to chop off healthy body parts and make you a permanent medical patient. We are 'fucking human beings' who are suffering as we watch you, dear one, get sucked into what you describe as a 'lifestyle' but that is, in reality, a cult. We are not angry at you but we are angry at whoever is 'affirming' you as we know it is not possible and we fear your striving after unreality will pull you further into the morass. We don't ever think you are 'crazy' or stupid'! We love you and miss you - we miss who you really are and who you were born to be.
No need to pray for me, I'm doing great. I graduated college, and now make six figures doing what I love, happier and healthier than I've ever been. A few years ago I wouldn't have thought this was possible.
You've been severely mislead about the risks of HRT, but I don't think arguing about it will be effective, so I'll leave it at that. (And surgery, transition-related surgeries don't make you a "permanent medical patient" under any normal circumstances, you just get them, recover, and move on). Rather, I'll point out that lots of people make physically risky decisions. One of my friends is into spelunking, the lunatic, another is a biochemist working with mutagens, and another attends kink orgies, though her parents don't know that. Reality check here: we're not talking about a fentanyl addiction, your kid isn't in acute danger. It is okay to disagree with your kids' choices, but if you're constantly "shaking with fear", there's something else going on.
Case in point, many of the students I was talking about, actually, weren't planning on medically transitioning, and their parents knew that. Their parents couldn't deal with their clothes and hairstyle. They used the exact same lines you're using about an AMAB kid painting their nails.
There is no "who I really am", there is only who I am. Tautologically, I cannot be anyone else. It is a good way to be.
I'm so sorry to hear that, Alex. I do believe parents have to be both honest and direct with their children. If you haven't already, I would absolutely tell your son or daughter just that: that he or she is intentionally being taught to hate and fear you. Your child probably knows it but won't admit it to you, but I think he or she needs to hear it from you.
yes, I agree in principle and I think I've tried to do this but with very poor outcome. The thing is, if someone hates you then they automatically hate and reject everything you say and everything you find important and true. Like: love, compassion, the goodness of one's own body, and so forth. ... Teaching kids to hate and distrust their parents is outrageous AND schools, therapists, and employees of LGBTQ++ non-profits, along with random people on the internet who are "trans influencers" all teach hatred and distrust of parents. ... one-on-one with our children: how can we break through? ... I'd really like to know. ... In Al-Anon I heard it said that kids who are addicts can't hear or learn from their parents, they have to learn the start of recovery from someone else. Maybe that's true of trans too? Maybe I can be "the stranger" who helps someone else's trans kid? Maybe a kind stranger will help my poor lost child?
Unfortunately, with adult kids, there's not a lot you can do. They make their own decisions. As much as you might desperately need to, you can't control them anymore.
While working at a Battered Women's Shelter years ago, I learned to accept the inevitable limits of what we can do to save someone else's life. It is tragic. But it's the truth.
Love, reality, steadfastness, and sincerity: those are all the tools you have.
Your child almost certainly knows you love them. You don't have to beg them to believe you. Just keep calmly saying it. That's a permanent crack in the wall of lies they're being fed.
Your child needs to stay anchored, even in the smallest way, to reality. So let them see that you know what is real. Whether they like it or not, that is their permanent lifeline out of this madness.
Your child needs to know you will always be there, no matter how crazy they get, so that when this Trans panic goes the way of all moral panics, they can come home to you to be healed.
And, honestly, your child needs to know that you will always be sincere with them. Let them know when you're annoyed. Let them know when they make you laugh at a joke. Let them know when you're hurting.
I think a lot of these young people become so indoctrinated in falseness on the Internet that they're easily taught to exploit their parents' fear of upsetting them over this by demanding falseness at home too.
But you've been annoyed at them before. It wasn't the end of the world. You both got over it then, and you can get over it now too. In fact, the faster you switch between annoyance and laughter, the more powerfully they get the message: "We humans CAN cope with not getting our own way about every single thing."
So be loving, be real, be steadfast, and be SINCERE.
I know they might cut you off. I do know. My brother did that to my parents during the Satanic panic. But keep sending brief, normal messages for as long as you're able. Send mail if you have to. Let them know you haven't given up on them. You will always be there.
You can also certainly try to be the kind stranger who helps someone else's kid. I've done that on Twitter, when I found myself talking to someone who said he was a 15-year-old on estrogen.
I explained to him how he was being exploited for money. (He naively thought that, because he didn't pay for it, it was somehow just free. . .)
I explained to him that ALL the adults involved were grooming him. (He tried to get me to say, "Oh, no. Not all of them!" But I said, dead serious, "Oh, yes. ALL OF THEM.")
And I asked what he thought I could get out of explaining all this to him for free on the Internet, when there are people telling him the opposite who hope to make tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars off him.
Then I urged him very sincerely to get off the Internet and go tell his parents that he didn't want to damage his body anymore.
It was all I could do.
Other than that, the most powerful thing you can do for your child is indirect: keep spreading the word to everyone you meet. Keep letting them know that this is WRONG. You don't have to make them agree with you. Just keep throwing them that lifeline to reality.
Like Chicken Little, when we all hold our feet in the air at once, we can hold up the sky.
After witnessing the insane gender wars in the West now for the past 8 years, I can say this with some confidence: no parent ever did anything as wrong as tech companies, perverts, the educational establishment, medical and psychiatric authorities, and the civil/human rights NGOs have done to families.
I know devout, evangelical Christians who have lost a daughter or a son to this madness. I know secular Ph.D. academics and lawyers and working class people who have, too. Same with people who gave their children I-pads and smart phones in elementary school, and with those who made their children wait until they were older teens. I know people who are very conservative politically, and very liberal or even leftist who have lost a child to this cult. Because the internet is everyone's 24-hour front yard/attractive nuisance, this sickness can infect anyone. There is literally no community, religion, ideology, or philosophy or philosophy that can protect us aside from rejecting it totally and refusing to participate in trans rituals and pronoun prayers.
This is a collective action problem, and as the original writer of this column suggests, so many share the blame in propping up the maddest and most destructive ideas the West has ever seen. Here is my modest proposal for opposing the insanity.
Pronouns are for the user/writer/speaker, not the referent.
Sex is material. Gender is just stereotypes.
Sex is sometimes medically or socially relevant. Gender never is.
Humans are mammals, and no mammal can 'change sex.'
So much of this confusion is I due to the long-term consequences of separating sexual intercourse from child-bearing/rearing. The reason so many people are confused about sex and its purpose in our lives is that we're not having enough children. We've forgotten what sex and human sexual dimorphism accomplish for our species. I'm not saying we should go back to life before the pill--but this may be the long tail of the sexual revolution in the West.
We have doubled the human population from 4 billion to 8 billion in just 45 years.
We're still having WAY TOO MANY children.
Sex has always, always, always been about physical pleasure. That's how survival of the species has been assured in all mammals.
Humans have only very recently, in the last hundred years or so, had sex on purpose to have children. If we'd relied on intellectually planning for the reproduction of our species, human beings would have died out a million years ago.
I think you’re underestimating the intelligence & will of people in the more distant past. The fertility decline in the US & France began in the eighteenth century, not the twentieth.
There’s evidence that contraception was responding to a demand, not creating one.
I'm totally with you until your last paragraph which made me do a double take.
Long tail of the sexual revolution? ... a very long, very attenuated tail, perhaps, but no one ever made so much money off of free love. Well, marketing the pill reaped some profits for Big Pharma but the surgeries required by trans are of a different order altogether.
Chalking up trans to one historical cause is itself a lost cause. Rather I'd suggest that trans arises from a confluence of forces, a type of perfect storm of smart phones, YouTube and other social media, online gaming and adults penetrating into children's games, online pornography (PornHub!!!), "sex work is work" rather than then clear understanding that prostitution is degrading for all involved, and, yes, gender theory and the progression from John Money to Martine Rothblatt to Yogyakarta Principles & Denton Document and international campaign for changing laws to prioritize gender id over sex.
All of these working together produced our current medico-legal health crisis for our young people.
I don’t think we’ll fully be able to assess the sexual revolution for at least another 40 years. It’s the kind of change that takes generations to play out & understand—my mother’s generation was the first one affected, but we won’t know how it all turned out until my grandchildren are at least in their 40s.
I should have said that people in the WEIRD world (Western Educated Industrialized Rich & Democratic) aren’t having enough kids. Depopulation is a reality now in the rich Asian countries, Western Europe, & North America. The only reason the US & Canadian populations keep rising is because of largely unchecked immigration.
yes, I'm aware of the arguments about de-population. Economists like to argue that lower population levels will devastate economies. I'm not buying that.
Planet earth has never hosted nearly these many humans ever in its 5 billion year history. Why should our species grow and grow with no thought to the quality of the eco-sphere through which and in which we live? Over population is drastically real. Over consumption is drastically real. Curbing both will go a very long way to reducing the degradation of life on earth. ... but this is far off topic for PITT.
One could argue that the polycrisis, which includes nuclear threats & radioactive waste with no place to go, plastics pollution, air pollution, water pollution & shortages, and all the problems of anthropogenic climate change, thrives on over population.
Moreover, there are many many trans people who have children. Women who become "men" and then birth babies and insist the babies call them Dad rather than Mom.
I'm a humanist. I'm pro-human. I'm also a big fan of the Enlightenment and Western values. To paraphrase Gandhi, I think Western Civilization is a good idea, actually. Rule of law. Individuals not tribes. Universal human rights. These are noble goals.
The environmental doomerist narrative has always struck me as very similar to Christian apocalypticism: we're all sinners, we're all doomed, the end is nigh. It's interesting that this materialist perspective maps so perfectly on to the Christian one, don't you think? It might be true! The world will doubtlessly come to an end one day. But for all of the mad prognosticating over the last 2000+ years (probably longer, IDK), it hasn't yet.
Doomerism may be endemic to our species, because it's very hard for us to see or imagine the world past a typical human lifespan. 70-80 years is about as much bandwidth as most of us have. (See, I'm a materialist. The human body gives us a number of material limits within which we must operate.)
You are correct: some transgender people have children--most of them had them before they "transitioned." But I'm afraid that the current transgender craze is a blind pouch, or a cul-de-sac, of broken lineage and infertility. But having children makes most people happy, so I think it's a scandal that our educational and theraputic establishment are taking away that option for so many before they can understand what they're giving up.
I’d like to add to this list all of the ex-friends and their moms who affirmed and affirmed away, who have all moved on, and are now happily enjoying the rest of their lives
Ugh, the woman who posted pictures of my child and her friends, many of whom struggled with gender dysphoria, with the caption, “All the kids who call me mom!” I don’t even have social media; I had to hear about it from a friend. I believe the term is “glitter mom.” My child’s best friend’s mother. Thought she was being such a woke hero. If she knew, if she experienced just a little bit of the absolute hell we’ve been through, she would never have supported this. But anything to look like a hashtag ally!!
you are so right! Parents of other children who were not going through this who took it upon themselves to 'affirm' our children. Maybe we could hold a spot in Dante's circle just for them.
Sometimes I wonder if the damage to the families is always collateral. It feels like at least some of the glitter activists and "teachers" inflict it intentionally, wanting to destroy others out of spite, jealousy, and hatred. ( In a malicious Look-at-your- gifted-son / your -beautiful -daughter/ your-perfect-family now!)
yes, I think you are absolutely correct. The paid personnel at the LGBTQ++ homeless shelter which harbored my child & fraudulently enrolled him on Medicaid and facilitated surgeries, also worked hard to shred my child's relationship with me.
On the national level I didn’t vote for Trump (or Harris) but as one who watched with horror as the Biden administration proposed regulations that would have allowed men to shower with my daughter and granddaughter I do admire the steps his administration has taken to restore a degree of sanity to this important area of human relations.
if you live in a Blue State then chances are your state level educational policies mandate "trans inclusion" which mandates housing boys with girls on school trips, keeping it a secret from parents, and allowing boys-who-think-they-are-girls into girls restrooms and loclkerooms. This is the NORM in Blue states now.
Well done. Captures perfectly how many people are affected by the trans identified person and the ideology they've fallen prey to. It's almost as if they are in the eye of the hurricane, oblivious to the havoc being wreaked outside of the eye. It's taken so much from us - but I refuse to wallow in the role of victim. It's a struggle every day.
As for the teachers, doctors, therapists and surgeons who perpetrated this catastrophe, I just wonder when the exposes will begin to roll out. Whether they admit to their complicity, or they are exposed by their colleagues, it will happen. And I suspect those revelations will be earth-shattering.
There are a number of detransitioner lawsuits going on right now.
There are a number of lawsuits over men in women's prisons going on.
There are lawsuits going before the Supreme Court over men in women's sports.
Besides that, left-wing women have been publishing exposes online (and, when they can, in right-wing publications) for years already. Read Reduxx. The exposes are there.
Great article. I would also like to acknowledge spouses, the trans-widows, who have been gaslit, tortured, shamed, and discarded while having their whole world shattered.
I have started to volunteer and work with advocate protecting children from gender ideology. It’s a great group along with LGB courage Coalition and Democrats against gender ideology.
Oh boy, this one hurt, like picking off an old scab, yesterday I was walking and thinking and I just had a moment of rage and I wanted to yell at every person, every neighbor, everyone of my daughters friends and their family, and my daughters teachers, and counselors, and doctors and everyone who affirmed this delusion that if only she took testosterone and removed her breasts she would be a man, as I type this I feel the rage in me, I am so angry at so many people who could not just say......No....;;; -(. Thanks, a lot all of you who could not do that, as I fold into a ball of yarn and fade away with my oldest daughter completely maimed and hurting, her life forever changed for the worse. God help us all, my only source of hope is Jesus to get me through all of this. UGHHHHHH!!!! "pulled down every tradition, every family vacation, every high school prom, every holiday, every joyous memory - as this one sibling sucked all of the air out of the loving family leaving an empty shell of people trying to hold it together in the wake of" trans.
This is the most total and gut wrenching explanation of our shared experience I have yet read! And I feel exactly the same... Though scared, my wounds are healing and I rise daily preparing to continue the battle until All our children are freed and return home! But also realizing, for the rest of our lives we will have to deal with the aftermath of this violence they have suffered!
Thank you for sharing this with us..
For the first time ever, I am banned from reading this article because of the UK’s so-called ‘Online Safety Act’. Sadly, I cannot post this on X (twitter) & help to spread the invaluable work of Pitt Parents in their crusade against the evil trans cult. America, keep freedom alive; the western world needs you.
I would be in so much trouble if I lived in the UK! Grateful to live in the USA and many of us are Freedom Fighters...Free Speech is the only way Truth comes out!
Spot on, but thank God this recovering alcoholic mom isn’t drinking over this BS. If I succumbed to affirming and going along with the lie just to keep the peace, I would probably be drunk. To thine own self be true.
Incidentally, AlAnon principles help me a lot with dealing with my trans-identifying child. I definitely don’t have to like or condone it. But I accept that there’s nothing I can do to change her now-adult (but still sick) mind. And then I do my best to live with grace and dignity. May God bless and strengthen all of us trying to navigate this without self destructing.
"To thine on self be true and it follows as the night the day ..thou canst then to no man be false"
Shakespeare
“Moms who know with certainty that they did something wrong”
And the amount of mental energy and resources and research just to send a text is unbelievable. I’ve spent so many days and hours on a few lines of text to my child.
I wish so much for all of us to be seen and heard. 💔 Thank you all.
I used to always watch my weight. Watching carefully what I eat, counting calories, taking care of my image. I feel I can't anymore I just eat and eat without even thinking I just don't care anymore I miss my baby, my baby that was born a boy I miss him so much
I know that pain. It helps me to pray the rosary as it gives me 20 minutes of peace. I pray for all young men caught up in this cult, including your dear son.
Thank you Christa, I pray every day too for all our young men
You must take care of your health... physical, mental and emotional! You can't help your son in the future if you don't! Focus on Christ! I believe God has a plan to heal, deliver and bring our children, His children home!
Read Daniel 4: 25-35
I am praying the Kings story becomes the story for all our children!
Yes I belive it too, I am little by little taking care of myself more so when my boy comes back I am healthy and strong
Please understand, you have to look after yourself. You don’t have to count calories but you do have to choose healthy, whole food. I suggest you go on a ketogenic or a carnivore diet.
If you are choosing to eat high carbohydrate, it will hurt you. Really hurt.
If you take care of yourself, there is a future with some good in it for you.
I suggest you might need counseling to help you. The eating problem is fixable, but you might need to be coached what to eat. It does not mean counting calories but it does mean choosing the right foods.
Thank you for your beautiful words🙏
Please be sure to keep an eye on your health. It's okay to not be skinny. Women are naturally many shapes, generally the same shapes as their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Just please don't turn this grief into self-harm.
Think about what other comfort activities you can indulge in: reading, sleeping, exercising, a hobby. Anything, so long as it doesn't turn against you.
Your mental health depends upon you staying healthy.
I think I'm getting there little by little, my taking care of myself. I work full time and I just got my Real Estate license I think studying helped me to keep my mind busy. I will try to ho back to exercising it helps a lot Thank you 💜
Thank you ♡♡
"Mothers who. . .hold the truth behind their teeth."
THIS.
In a nutshell.
as a clarion call this is great.
but everyday I ask myself: how can I help my child? and I find no answer. Because there's such a huge array of people who "affirm" and "celebrate" and teach our trans kids to hate their parents.
So, my kid has been taught to hate and fear me. How can I help my child who can't begin to see my love?
Hey Alex, I know you're pretty deep into this so you might ignore everything I say, but I thought it was worth a shot.
I'm trans. I'm not your kid, but I might be similar to your kid. I don't hate my parents. We love each other, and we try to have a healthy relationship despite the fact that they don't approve of my lifestyle. Would I prefer it if they affirmed me? Of course. But parents have taken issue with their kids' radical new lifestyles since the dawn of time, so it is what it is.
I'm also a recent college graduate, and was heavily involved with my university's queer frat, so I've heard a lot about trans students' conflicts with their families. I can't speak for everyone everywhere, but there was no cultural norm at my frat of encouraging people to hate their parents. People generally give advice on how to reconcile with your parents. Many kids desperately wanted to reconcile with their parents. They didn't mind too much if their parents wouldn't use their pronouns, as long as their parents didn't turn every conversation into a chance to berate them about their hairstyle.
Not all family conflicts were over transness. Sometimes it was because the kid was gay, or polyamorous, or dating a black guy (yes, really), or a thousand things that weren't related to gender and sexuality at all. These different conflicts tended to play out in similar ways, because they're motivated by the same anxieties. Your kid doesn't want the life you wanted for them. They're stepping into a brave new world that seems weird and scary and repulsive. It's normal to be worried and disappointed, and you don't have to drop all of your opinions and blindly agree with every choice they make, but... you can be a fucking human being.
Just talk to your kid. Accept that you have your disagreements, set your boundaries on what pronouns you use if that bothers you so much, but don't let this destroy any chance of having a relationship with your child. Your relationship matters more than this.
And to any lurkers that are on the fence about this forum: You don't feel comfortable with your kid's radical new lifestyle, you don't fit in among the "affirm and celebrate parents", that's understandable. But do you really think this is the place where you'll get neutral, unbiased information? You know your child. You know they're not crazy or stupid, and you know they love you. Please don't let a Substack post convince you otherwise. Just be a human.
I'm praying for you, dear one. But, you need to be clear that parents are 'turning everything into a fight' because they are worried sick about you. They are shaking in fear that the hormones will cause heart damage, osteoporosis, infertility, dementia, and early death. They are frightened about the monstrous surgeries being offered to you by unethical doctors promising to chop off healthy body parts and make you a permanent medical patient. We are 'fucking human beings' who are suffering as we watch you, dear one, get sucked into what you describe as a 'lifestyle' but that is, in reality, a cult. We are not angry at you but we are angry at whoever is 'affirming' you as we know it is not possible and we fear your striving after unreality will pull you further into the morass. We don't ever think you are 'crazy' or stupid'! We love you and miss you - we miss who you really are and who you were born to be.
No need to pray for me, I'm doing great. I graduated college, and now make six figures doing what I love, happier and healthier than I've ever been. A few years ago I wouldn't have thought this was possible.
You've been severely mislead about the risks of HRT, but I don't think arguing about it will be effective, so I'll leave it at that. (And surgery, transition-related surgeries don't make you a "permanent medical patient" under any normal circumstances, you just get them, recover, and move on). Rather, I'll point out that lots of people make physically risky decisions. One of my friends is into spelunking, the lunatic, another is a biochemist working with mutagens, and another attends kink orgies, though her parents don't know that. Reality check here: we're not talking about a fentanyl addiction, your kid isn't in acute danger. It is okay to disagree with your kids' choices, but if you're constantly "shaking with fear", there's something else going on.
Case in point, many of the students I was talking about, actually, weren't planning on medically transitioning, and their parents knew that. Their parents couldn't deal with their clothes and hairstyle. They used the exact same lines you're using about an AMAB kid painting their nails.
There is no "who I really am", there is only who I am. Tautologically, I cannot be anyone else. It is a good way to be.
I'm so sorry to hear that, Alex. I do believe parents have to be both honest and direct with their children. If you haven't already, I would absolutely tell your son or daughter just that: that he or she is intentionally being taught to hate and fear you. Your child probably knows it but won't admit it to you, but I think he or she needs to hear it from you.
yes, I agree in principle and I think I've tried to do this but with very poor outcome. The thing is, if someone hates you then they automatically hate and reject everything you say and everything you find important and true. Like: love, compassion, the goodness of one's own body, and so forth. ... Teaching kids to hate and distrust their parents is outrageous AND schools, therapists, and employees of LGBTQ++ non-profits, along with random people on the internet who are "trans influencers" all teach hatred and distrust of parents. ... one-on-one with our children: how can we break through? ... I'd really like to know. ... In Al-Anon I heard it said that kids who are addicts can't hear or learn from their parents, they have to learn the start of recovery from someone else. Maybe that's true of trans too? Maybe I can be "the stranger" who helps someone else's trans kid? Maybe a kind stranger will help my poor lost child?
Unfortunately, with adult kids, there's not a lot you can do. They make their own decisions. As much as you might desperately need to, you can't control them anymore.
While working at a Battered Women's Shelter years ago, I learned to accept the inevitable limits of what we can do to save someone else's life. It is tragic. But it's the truth.
Love, reality, steadfastness, and sincerity: those are all the tools you have.
Your child almost certainly knows you love them. You don't have to beg them to believe you. Just keep calmly saying it. That's a permanent crack in the wall of lies they're being fed.
Your child needs to stay anchored, even in the smallest way, to reality. So let them see that you know what is real. Whether they like it or not, that is their permanent lifeline out of this madness.
Your child needs to know you will always be there, no matter how crazy they get, so that when this Trans panic goes the way of all moral panics, they can come home to you to be healed.
And, honestly, your child needs to know that you will always be sincere with them. Let them know when you're annoyed. Let them know when they make you laugh at a joke. Let them know when you're hurting.
I think a lot of these young people become so indoctrinated in falseness on the Internet that they're easily taught to exploit their parents' fear of upsetting them over this by demanding falseness at home too.
But you've been annoyed at them before. It wasn't the end of the world. You both got over it then, and you can get over it now too. In fact, the faster you switch between annoyance and laughter, the more powerfully they get the message: "We humans CAN cope with not getting our own way about every single thing."
So be loving, be real, be steadfast, and be SINCERE.
I know they might cut you off. I do know. My brother did that to my parents during the Satanic panic. But keep sending brief, normal messages for as long as you're able. Send mail if you have to. Let them know you haven't given up on them. You will always be there.
You can also certainly try to be the kind stranger who helps someone else's kid. I've done that on Twitter, when I found myself talking to someone who said he was a 15-year-old on estrogen.
I explained to him how he was being exploited for money. (He naively thought that, because he didn't pay for it, it was somehow just free. . .)
I explained to him that ALL the adults involved were grooming him. (He tried to get me to say, "Oh, no. Not all of them!" But I said, dead serious, "Oh, yes. ALL OF THEM.")
And I asked what he thought I could get out of explaining all this to him for free on the Internet, when there are people telling him the opposite who hope to make tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars off him.
Then I urged him very sincerely to get off the Internet and go tell his parents that he didn't want to damage his body anymore.
It was all I could do.
Other than that, the most powerful thing you can do for your child is indirect: keep spreading the word to everyone you meet. Keep letting them know that this is WRONG. You don't have to make them agree with you. Just keep throwing them that lifeline to reality.
Like Chicken Little, when we all hold our feet in the air at once, we can hold up the sky.
After witnessing the insane gender wars in the West now for the past 8 years, I can say this with some confidence: no parent ever did anything as wrong as tech companies, perverts, the educational establishment, medical and psychiatric authorities, and the civil/human rights NGOs have done to families.
I know devout, evangelical Christians who have lost a daughter or a son to this madness. I know secular Ph.D. academics and lawyers and working class people who have, too. Same with people who gave their children I-pads and smart phones in elementary school, and with those who made their children wait until they were older teens. I know people who are very conservative politically, and very liberal or even leftist who have lost a child to this cult. Because the internet is everyone's 24-hour front yard/attractive nuisance, this sickness can infect anyone. There is literally no community, religion, ideology, or philosophy or philosophy that can protect us aside from rejecting it totally and refusing to participate in trans rituals and pronoun prayers.
This is a collective action problem, and as the original writer of this column suggests, so many share the blame in propping up the maddest and most destructive ideas the West has ever seen. Here is my modest proposal for opposing the insanity.
Pronouns are for the user/writer/speaker, not the referent.
Sex is material. Gender is just stereotypes.
Sex is sometimes medically or socially relevant. Gender never is.
Humans are mammals, and no mammal can 'change sex.'
So much of this confusion is I due to the long-term consequences of separating sexual intercourse from child-bearing/rearing. The reason so many people are confused about sex and its purpose in our lives is that we're not having enough children. We've forgotten what sex and human sexual dimorphism accomplish for our species. I'm not saying we should go back to life before the pill--but this may be the long tail of the sexual revolution in the West.
I agree with Alex:
We're not having enough children???
We have doubled the human population from 4 billion to 8 billion in just 45 years.
We're still having WAY TOO MANY children.
Sex has always, always, always been about physical pleasure. That's how survival of the species has been assured in all mammals.
Humans have only very recently, in the last hundred years or so, had sex on purpose to have children. If we'd relied on intellectually planning for the reproduction of our species, human beings would have died out a million years ago.
I think you’re underestimating the intelligence & will of people in the more distant past. The fertility decline in the US & France began in the eighteenth century, not the twentieth.
There’s evidence that contraception was responding to a demand, not creating one.
I'm totally with you until your last paragraph which made me do a double take.
Long tail of the sexual revolution? ... a very long, very attenuated tail, perhaps, but no one ever made so much money off of free love. Well, marketing the pill reaped some profits for Big Pharma but the surgeries required by trans are of a different order altogether.
Chalking up trans to one historical cause is itself a lost cause. Rather I'd suggest that trans arises from a confluence of forces, a type of perfect storm of smart phones, YouTube and other social media, online gaming and adults penetrating into children's games, online pornography (PornHub!!!), "sex work is work" rather than then clear understanding that prostitution is degrading for all involved, and, yes, gender theory and the progression from John Money to Martine Rothblatt to Yogyakarta Principles & Denton Document and international campaign for changing laws to prioritize gender id over sex.
All of these working together produced our current medico-legal health crisis for our young people.
I don’t think we’ll fully be able to assess the sexual revolution for at least another 40 years. It’s the kind of change that takes generations to play out & understand—my mother’s generation was the first one affected, but we won’t know how it all turned out until my grandchildren are at least in their 40s.
I should have said that people in the WEIRD world (Western Educated Industrialized Rich & Democratic) aren’t having enough kids. Depopulation is a reality now in the rich Asian countries, Western Europe, & North America. The only reason the US & Canadian populations keep rising is because of largely unchecked immigration.
yes, I'm aware of the arguments about de-population. Economists like to argue that lower population levels will devastate economies. I'm not buying that.
Planet earth has never hosted nearly these many humans ever in its 5 billion year history. Why should our species grow and grow with no thought to the quality of the eco-sphere through which and in which we live? Over population is drastically real. Over consumption is drastically real. Curbing both will go a very long way to reducing the degradation of life on earth. ... but this is far off topic for PITT.
One could argue that the polycrisis, which includes nuclear threats & radioactive waste with no place to go, plastics pollution, air pollution, water pollution & shortages, and all the problems of anthropogenic climate change, thrives on over population.
Moreover, there are many many trans people who have children. Women who become "men" and then birth babies and insist the babies call them Dad rather than Mom.
I'm a humanist. I'm pro-human. I'm also a big fan of the Enlightenment and Western values. To paraphrase Gandhi, I think Western Civilization is a good idea, actually. Rule of law. Individuals not tribes. Universal human rights. These are noble goals.
The environmental doomerist narrative has always struck me as very similar to Christian apocalypticism: we're all sinners, we're all doomed, the end is nigh. It's interesting that this materialist perspective maps so perfectly on to the Christian one, don't you think? It might be true! The world will doubtlessly come to an end one day. But for all of the mad prognosticating over the last 2000+ years (probably longer, IDK), it hasn't yet.
Doomerism may be endemic to our species, because it's very hard for us to see or imagine the world past a typical human lifespan. 70-80 years is about as much bandwidth as most of us have. (See, I'm a materialist. The human body gives us a number of material limits within which we must operate.)
You are correct: some transgender people have children--most of them had them before they "transitioned." But I'm afraid that the current transgender craze is a blind pouch, or a cul-de-sac, of broken lineage and infertility. But having children makes most people happy, so I think it's a scandal that our educational and theraputic establishment are taking away that option for so many before they can understand what they're giving up.
I’d like to add to this list all of the ex-friends and their moms who affirmed and affirmed away, who have all moved on, and are now happily enjoying the rest of their lives
Ugh, the woman who posted pictures of my child and her friends, many of whom struggled with gender dysphoria, with the caption, “All the kids who call me mom!” I don’t even have social media; I had to hear about it from a friend. I believe the term is “glitter mom.” My child’s best friend’s mother. Thought she was being such a woke hero. If she knew, if she experienced just a little bit of the absolute hell we’ve been through, she would never have supported this. But anything to look like a hashtag ally!!
you are so right! Parents of other children who were not going through this who took it upon themselves to 'affirm' our children. Maybe we could hold a spot in Dante's circle just for them.
Sometimes I wonder if the damage to the families is always collateral. It feels like at least some of the glitter activists and "teachers" inflict it intentionally, wanting to destroy others out of spite, jealousy, and hatred. ( In a malicious Look-at-your- gifted-son / your -beautiful -daughter/ your-perfect-family now!)
yes, I think you are absolutely correct. The paid personnel at the LGBTQ++ homeless shelter which harbored my child & fraudulently enrolled him on Medicaid and facilitated surgeries, also worked hard to shred my child's relationship with me.
It's like a Grimm's fairy tale come to life.
The longer this goes on, the more I think about Greek mythology, Aesop's fables, and the Grimm brothers.
totally agree.
Madness is closely related to fairy tales, and trans is a collective madness
On the national level I didn’t vote for Trump (or Harris) but as one who watched with horror as the Biden administration proposed regulations that would have allowed men to shower with my daughter and granddaughter I do admire the steps his administration has taken to restore a degree of sanity to this important area of human relations.
if you live in a Blue State then chances are your state level educational policies mandate "trans inclusion" which mandates housing boys with girls on school trips, keeping it a secret from parents, and allowing boys-who-think-they-are-girls into girls restrooms and loclkerooms. This is the NORM in Blue states now.
Well done. Captures perfectly how many people are affected by the trans identified person and the ideology they've fallen prey to. It's almost as if they are in the eye of the hurricane, oblivious to the havoc being wreaked outside of the eye. It's taken so much from us - but I refuse to wallow in the role of victim. It's a struggle every day.
I am always dismayed by the numbers of people prepared to lie to one another, especially to loved ones.
As for the teachers, doctors, therapists and surgeons who perpetrated this catastrophe, I just wonder when the exposes will begin to roll out. Whether they admit to their complicity, or they are exposed by their colleagues, it will happen. And I suspect those revelations will be earth-shattering.
They are rolling out.
There are a number of detransitioner lawsuits going on right now.
There are a number of lawsuits over men in women's prisons going on.
There are lawsuits going before the Supreme Court over men in women's sports.
Besides that, left-wing women have been publishing exposes online (and, when they can, in right-wing publications) for years already. Read Reduxx. The exposes are there.
Great article. I would also like to acknowledge spouses, the trans-widows, who have been gaslit, tortured, shamed, and discarded while having their whole world shattered.
Yes, their suffering is intense