Happy ROGD Awareness Day (said no one ever)
I’m too young for this but in my parent’s generation everyone could tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot. The closest approximation for my age might be recalling where I was when I learned of the Challenger explosion or, of course, September 11th.
In the PITT community, we can all remember exactly where we were when we were informed that our child was “born in the wrong body”.
Today, on ROGD Awareness Day, I invite you to share your story. I’ll go first. Feel free to share yours. That is what PITT is for. And, by the way, there is no one else I could share this with nor, despite having some super supportive friends, do I think they’d care for these details.
Let the sharing begin.
When I was informed she was trans…. Hold please while I find the email. Aha, here we go:
“Mom, I can’t come home [from university] for nana’s birthday next week but I have some news to share. I am transitioning and will be starting testosterone to lower my voice and make myself look like a man. T will start now. Next summer I’ll be getting top surgery to have female breast tissue removed. I’m not asking for your permission, I’m telling you. Once you accept this, you can visit me at school to meet the new me.”
And when did I learn about ROGD……
This shocking announcement set my husband and me into a spiral of—depending on the day or even hour—disbelief, incredulity, anger, outrage, despair, rage, and sadness—and this cycle played on repeat. My daughter had never been a tomboy and was not attracted to women. But she was away from home for the first extended period of time, socially awkward and lonely. It also set me off on a binge of research. I looked up every article I could find on the topic. I contacted the author of those articles. I spoke to Dr. Laura, Edwards, Abigail Shrier, and Sasha Ayad. I read Lisa Littman’s study. And then I found a name for what was happening to my 18-year-old daughter—ROGD. And here’s the funny part: I sent the article to her doctors and asked if they were familiar with it and if they had any concerns about her sudden self-diagnosis and the seriousness of the “treatment” plan. If you are on the PITT site, you can guess what happened next.
These memories are painful. It’s hard to revisit the mental distress from that time for both our daughter and for us. It’s humiliating and infuriating to recall how we were treated by her doctors. But maybe ROGD Awareness Day is a good thing because, if you aren’t enraged by an ideology that encourages young people to medicate for life and remove healthy body parts, then you are unaware. And, unfortunately, activists are still deny that ROGD is even a thing, as evidenced by the battle to publish Dr Michael Bailey’s latest ROGD study—and it’s ultimate retraction.
Welcome to PITT.
Thank you! I'm sorry you had to hear that from your daughter. I know how horrible ROGD feels.
Up until Christmas of '21 our daughter was a happy young woman who loved clothes and having friends and boyfriends. Her high school and college friends were all happy, smart, confident, pretty women. For college she insisted on attending a Christian college in Malibu for its international program. Her sophomore year she went abroad in Switzerland with her school. She and her friends travelled all over Europe and took selfies that they posted on IG (I look at these photos now so I don't feel crazy). For her 21st birthday she and about 20 friends shared a rental house in the Swiss Alps, her boyfriend from London flew in to visit. Her "identity" was basically smart sorority girl.
This identity continued until 2nd semester of her senior year when Covid hit and the Governor of California told everyone on campus they needed to go home immediately. She had one day to say goodbye to her friends of 3.5 years, many she would never see again. She came home to finish her last semester of college and make the best of it. But, we had been transferred to LA from our home in the east coast, so she wasn't in her actual home, she was with us and her sister in a strange place. Pretty, but not home. Graduation was cancelled, everything was cancelled and her sister, who had left school for a role on a streaming show, was equally miserable since all filming had stopped. The four of us stuck together in a strange place. We made the best of it.
That summer our daughter applied to grad school in DC online. We thought it would be something positive. Her sister would be back at work, "fresh start" we thought. She started classes in Jan. from home and continued until schools opened again in the fall of 2021. By then she was dating a boy in LA (friend of a college friend). She wanted to visit him at grad school in London so she asked us to update her passport and we did, still her female name and identity. We bought her furniture for her new DC house that she would be sharing with four other women. All good!
She seemed to love DC and grad school. By October she was dating a new young man she met in DC and was calling us every day to tell us about her roommates, school and the boy she "loved." My husband flew to visit her in November and they had fun traveling the city. Over Thanksgiving she went to her high school reunion back east and reported to us that she loved it and was very happy.
And then it all came to end. It started when everyone at her reunion ended up with Covid and then DC boy broke up with her. She was really stressed about her classes and finals. Instead of talking to us, she started hanging up on us and blocking us. We asked her what was the matter if she was ok and she told us she was "fine and to stop asking." We had a flight for her to come to us the week before Christmas so we sent her a big gift basket for finals, told her we love her and tried to stay calm until we could get her home.
Then, a week before she was to fly home for Christmas, out of nowhere we saw a binder purchase on our Amazon account to her house. We called her and asked us about it and she said "She was just trying things out and don't be transphobic." She also informed us that she'd cut her hair short and "we'd love it." We suspected we wouldn't.
Fortunately, a good friend was visiting who is a trained therapist. She agreed to stay until our daughter returned. When our daughter showed up at LAX she looked horrible. She was dressed as a boy, with a shaved head, a binder and calling herself a new male name. We were so upset. Our therapist friend was also concerned, but she's know our daughter since she was two and suggested maybe our daughter was just acting out and "trying to get a rise out of us for some reason." She said, "No way is your daughter trans." She laughed about it and instructed us to just ignore it. We tried. But, we were terrified.
We made it through a very stressful Christmas pretending everything was fine. It was not. By the end of the visit we were in huge fights. We finally were able to get our daughter to agree not to take hormones or formally change her name. We begged her not to return to DC, but to get help. She refused and called us "transphobic." She was 24 and paying for school and her expenses, so there was nothing we could do. She agreed to return to us in three months and talk to us more.
A week later my mom called asking why my daughter was on IG shaving her head and telling the world she's "now a man?" We called our daughter and she blocked us on IG. She then started blocking all her college friends, high school friends and anyone that didn't support her new "identity" as a male. Everyone but her sister. Thank God! Thanks to her sister we were able to get her to stop blocking and come home to visit. This is when we started buying every book about ROGD and meeting other ROGD parents on Twitter. We also got a therapist for ourselves, but later fired him when he started demanding we "affirm" our daughter and then revealed his daughter was also "trans." Horrible therapist!
When our daughter returned home she was more angry and looking terrible. She stated lying about her childhood and past and making up negative stories about her former friends and us. It was horrific. Nothing like the daughter we raised for 24 years. She was a stranger, but still very much a girl. She was clearly trying to be "male," but since she's not, she had no idea how to dress, talk, walk or "be male." My husband was horrified. She just looked like someone who was going through a mental breakdown. Not happy at all. Some moments she would forget to "be male" and act like herself. During a family game, she started laughing and giggling. "She's back," we thought. Then the game would end and she'd say, "I just remembered I'm mad at you!" And the mean stranger would return. It was so painful.
We are now ROGD parents. This on again, off again, relationship with our daughter has been very painful. I've gained like 30 pounds stress eating and am on Lexapro for depression. Some days she is herself in a family group text or FaceTime call, other days she's the mean stranger again. We never know day to day. We don't believe she is taking hormones, but she has her own job in DC now, so who knows. We've sent her articles, studies, side effects. Sometimes she listens, other times she blocks us for a week and then returns. We are hostages to "gender ideology" wondering when we're going to get a call that she's taking hormones now. Maybe from a sister who saw it on IG or in a medical bill. We don't know. Yesterday she told us she had her first session with her new therapist and "it was great." Who knows what that means? Maybe it's a therapist that will actually find out what is going on with our daughter, or maybe it's the person that will get our daughter on hormones and send her finally down the path to surgeries and mutilation.
I didn't sleep last night. I drank too much wine and packed up our house for our move home. At least we'll be with all our friends back east, and the parents who all were there when we raised our daughter. They know our daughter was never "trans." They know our daughter was not born in the wrong body. They are loving and supportive. That's something I guess.
I hope for all the ROGD parents you know you're not crazy. Your child is not in the wrong body. You are loved and supported! You will always have a friend with me!
I hope she (your daughter) is doing better now.
I lost my step-daughter to this cult despite trying to be supportive and assuring her that she was loved and wanted noatter what.
She stopped speaking like normal person and every interaction was a series of talking points and false accusations. It broke my heart. It broke my daughter's heart.
It has permanently damaged my mental health but I am better now than I was a couple of years ago. I wish she had gotten the right help to support her in processing the trauma she was dealing with but it went so quickly to testosterone, name change, surgery and disconnection.
I just hope she finds happiness and inner peace someday. I will never fully have inner peace but that can't be helped now.
Sending love to you and your family. Thank you for sharing.