Did a fender-bender save my daughter from being trans? Part 2

Part 1.

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Part 2

About midway through my daughter’s senior year of high school, the thing I’d been dreading finally happened. She dropped the bombshell from school.

By text.

I want you to start calling me Kyle.

I knew she was doing it by text because that felt easier than doing it face-to-face. I was working from home so I could text freely. Nonetheless, I told her we’d talk about it in person after school.

She said there was no need to talk. I needed to start calling her Kyle and using he/him pronouns. End of discussion.

I told her no, I would do no such thing.

It went downhill from there. She wouldn’t let it go. She kept texting. I kept replying but also stressing that this wasn’t a conversation that could be resolved over text. I don’t have the actual transcript, but it went something like this:

She said she had always hated the name Kristin. I countered that there were many other names she could go by. Maybe just shorten it to Kris, or go by her middle name, or maybe use her initials, KD. She said no, that the name “Kristin” was, in her mind, associated with the “trauma” of having been teased in middle school. I said the healthy way to deal with that would be to discuss and address the “trauma,” not avoid it by changing her name. She said I wasn’t being supportive; her friends’ parents all used their chosen names and pronouns. I said what her friends’ parents did was none of my concern. She said she wanted a boy’s name. I said, “Why? You do not have gender dysphoria.” She said it wasn’t about gender. I said, “If it’s not about gender, then why does it have to be a boy’s name? Why do you have to change pronouns?”

She pivoted and said Kristin was just some name that meant nothing to her. She wanted a name that meant more. I said I was sorry she felt that way because we had agonized for nine long months over her name. She was named after one of my best friends. Her middle name, Daisy, was chosen by husband, a botanist. I said most people don’t necessarily love their names, just like most people don’t necessarily love their bodies, but I felt it was healthier to learn to accept ourselves as we are than to start looking for ways to change or “fix” ourselves. She doubled down and said she wanted me to tell the whole family that she was now going by Kyle and needed to be referred to as he/him. I said no, if she felt that strongly about it, she needed to tell them herself. I also told her the rest of the family would be even more confused than I was by her request, and she better be ready to answer a lot of pointed questions about gender and why she wanted to pretend to be a boy.

Through all of this, I kept trying to say, “We’ll talk about it when you get home.” I kept debating whether I should simply stop answering her texts, but I was torn between anger and anguish, trying to find my way through the minefield.

By now, it was the end of the school day. Talking about it “after school” meant only postponing it another ten or fifteen minutes, a showdown I was frankly not looking forward to. She went quiet for a few minutes.

Then, suddenly, my phone rang.

Caller ID showed it was Kristin.

She never called me. Never. She always texted.

I braced myself for a fight and answered.

What I got was my daughter in tears.

“I wrecked the car.”

It took me a second to re-orient myself. This wasn’t about names or genders. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, still sobbing. “I messed up.”

I told her I was on my way. I also told her to call her father. His office was only a block from her school. (Had she been thinking, she would have called him first. I suppose it means something that in the middle of a crisis, she wanted her mom, first and foremost.) With all the after-school traffic, my husband could get there on foot faster than I could by car. Sure enough, he (literally) ran straight there. I arrived a few minutes later.

It turned out my daughter had been so angry at me, so caught up in trying to argue via text, she’d stopped paying attention. She’d turned left in front of oncoming traffic.

Luckily, it was all at very low speed. Only a fender bender. Nobody was hurt. The other driver was also a teen with his mom in the car. The mom was calm and understanding. The cops had already been called. My daughter was issued a ticket. She kept crying, saying the wreck was her fault. My husband and I said that yes, it was. The other driver had the right-of-way, and my daughter was in fact at fault. But also, it was okay. Accidents happen. There were no injuries. The cars both had cosmetic damage only. We have insurance for a reason. All that mattered to us was that she was safe and unharmed. We hugged her a lot. We followed her and her badly dented car home, although through it all, I was starkly aware of the coming confrontation.

But remarkably, the subject of names and pronouns didn’t come up that night.

Or the next. Or the next.

I kept waiting for it to happen, dreading the moment she’d start the conversation again, but she never did.

Her senior year, I found out she’d changed her nickname. She still wasn’t going by Kristin, but she wasn’t going by Kyle either. She was now going by Shasta. I admit, I thought it was a silly name. No offense meant to any Shastas out there, but to me, it’s the name of a discount soda brand. But she pointed out that her father had chosen her middle name, Daisy, because shasta daisies are his favorite. She’d chosen Shasta as a nod to her given middle name.

That felt like a step in the right direction. I still chose to call her by her given name, but Shasta bothered me less than Kyle.

At the end of the year, the Rainbow Crew decided to attend prom. I was thrilled when Kristin told me she no longer wanted a tux. She wanted a dress. Not a regular old prom dress, of course. She was too theatrical for that. Instead, she chose an elaborate, bustled gown, like something out of the masquerade scene of Phantom of the Opera. I still didn’t get my day shopping with her, but I didn’t care. I paid the absurd amount of money to order the one she’d chosen online. Maybe it was silly of me, but I was just thrilled she was — for the first time in years — putting on something “girly.”

I wish I could say I had no reason to worry after that, but that wasn’t the case.

After graduating high school, she started talking again about breast reduction. The more we talked, the clearer it became she wanted something closer to a full-blown mastectomy than a “reduction.” We argued. I tried being logical, in so many ways, but she didn’t want to hear it. I said her father and I wouldn’t pay for anything so drastic. But what finally got through to her was when I burst into tears.

I didn’t plan it. I was just so torn up, imagining her beautiful body being mutilated. “You’re so young,” I managed to say as I cried. “I’m trying to stop you from making a decision that will affect you for the rest of your life.”

The tears did what logic couldn’t. She actually took a step back. “Would you feel better about it if I were older?” she asked.

I said yes, I’d feel different about it if she was thirty or forty. If she’d had a romantic relationship. If she weren’t still a virgin. If she’d experienced the joy of having somebody she loved celebrate her body. If she weren’t still way too young and naïve to understand what it really meant to be female, to have breasts, to contemplate whether she might want a family of her own at some point. I’d still hate it, no matter what. I won’t deny that. If it happens at thirty, I’ll still mourn. But would thirty be better than eighteen?

Absolutely.

She said, “Okay, we’ll talk about it again when I turn 30.”

I didn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t dare. Especially when I see how horrible this cult has become. When I see how many families have been torn apart by its ideology.

About two years ago, she discovered a Young Adult church group, thanks to some intervention from my cousin. Kristin now attends game night with them every week. There, she actually goes by Kristin. She’s still more attracted to girls than boys, and she’s honest about that. She’s commented many times that her church group is far more open-minded and tolerant than her supposedly liberal friends from high school. Game night with her church group is her favorite part of the week.

On the not-so-bright side, she’s still in daily contact with the Rainbow Crew via Discord. We threw her a party when she turned 21 and not as single one of them bothered to attend. Despite this heartbreaking snub, she still refers to them as her “real” friends. She still longs for their approval more than anything. She recently told me Thadeus was her best friend, even though they haven’t seen each other in person in more than a year. In her mind, Thadeus is still the epitome of cool, sitting above her on that pedestal.

I take hope in the smallest things. She no longer confines herself to non-gendered t-shirts. She’s begun wearing flowery blouses and says pink is her favorite color. She still prefers minimizing bras but will now wear shirts and (occasionally) dresses that flatter her figure. She surprised me once by trying on a low-cut, form-fitting, spaghetti-strap dress. In the end, she didn’t like the way it fit and we didn’t buy it, but just having her pick it out as a possibility felt like another small victory.

She knows I’m becoming more critical of the trans movement, although I tread carefully when we talk about it. But I read the heartbreaking stories here on PITT. I read about the loving, supportive parents who’ve lost their kids to this cultish ideology, and I cry for you. My heart breaks for you, over and over again. I can’t imagine the pain and heartache you’re going through.

I often find myself wondering how I dodged the bullet. Because that’s how it feels. Like crazy, blind luck is the only thing that saved me.

I can’t say I did any of it right. And I’m definitely not saying those whose kids succumbed to this insanity did it wrong, either. I know all of us are doing the best we can, trying to navigate the most destructive cult in modern history. But some nights when I lay awake thinking about how the world has lost its collective mind, I come back to one strange conclusion:

A simple fender-bender might have saved my daughter from deciding to be trans.

My husband laughs when I say this. He says Kristin was never enough of a follower to go too far with the trans craze. I’m not so sure. I think she would have embraced it fully if we’d shown even the smallest bit of support. Thank goodness it happened before the full wave of “affirm or else” began. But I don’t think any of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for Thadeus and the Rainbow Crew. There’s no denying how much they affected her decisions all the way through high school. How much they would likely still be affecting her if she hadn’t found another social outlet.

I don’t know how to wrap up this post because I don’t yet know how the story ends. I live in fear of her turning 30 and asking for a mastectomy. I keep hoping she’ll meet somebody and fall in love. At the same time, I worry the person she falls for will be part of the cult and she’ll be pulled right back in. I try to encourage her to think for herself, to hang with her church group, to make friends at her new job. But I don’t criticize the Rainbow Crew too often because she’s still longs to be part of them. I’m afraid my disapproval will push her closer to them instead.

In the end, I find myself doing what I know many of you do.

I wait.

And I hope the madness ends.