How are parents treated? A long answer to a short question
A few weeks ago, a detransitioner posted the following survey for parents:
There was no way for me to answer by the choices given, but he inspired me to write a long form answer instead.
My daughter has been evaluated, prodded, tested, psychoanalyzed and more since she was 4 years old. After managing a pretty happy and stable childhood in a foreign country, we unfortunately moved back to the US. She soon received a diagnosis of ASD and we promptly entered the mental health industrial complex.
Like most parents with a struggling child, I sought the help of various doctors, therapists and specialized schools and clinicians—both for her and for our family. I found that most are ill-equipped to deal with escalated teen problems such as self-harm, self-hate, eating disorders, and of course, trans.
Some therapists were outright harmful, like the ASD specialist who asked me if I “preferred to have a happy, fat daughter, or a suicidal one?” when I hesitated to give my then pre-teen daughter an off-label antipsychotic drug that causes metabolic disorders. Sound familiar? I am grateful for that experience because it taught me to listen to my instincts. It reminded me that these professionals are imperfect humans whose opinions should be questioned when they do not seem right.
Treatment gets more complicated once there is a trans identification. A provider’s abilities become impaired the moment they adopt the affirmation model. Let me state it plainly—clinicians who subscribe to this way of thinking have put their brain on life-support and are operating with averted eyes and on autopilot.
So what helped? For me what helped was researching and reading anything that could help me understand my daughter’s struggles. I learned that many girls disintegrate in adolescence, and that many don’t make it back in one piece. I read about teenage development, attachment theory, social communications disorder, and trauma. A researcher in another country sent me articles and studies about identity building in ASD adolescents, the confusing aspects of gender roles in that cohort, and how slow processing speeds and external influences can hinder and delay their maturity and development.
Regarding trans, I found 4th Wave Now, Peak Resilience Project, and the Benjamin Boyce’s YouTube channel. I consulted with Sasha Ayad and listened to Lisa Marchiano. I learned the meaning of the word iatrogenesis. When the pandemic started, I joined the ROGD parent support board, heard about Stella O’Malley, read Lisa Littman’s research, talked to other parents, devoured SEGM’s website, and realized that it was not me who has gone mad, but that the culture had shifted dramatically while I had been abroad.
The most helpful insights came from detransitioners’ tweets and stories. I know detransitioners are exasperated by parents because they think we look to them to ‘save our kids,’ but in reality, detransitioners are the only window we have into our kid’s world and mentality. Their experiences provide a profound understanding of what our kids are going through.
I read many accounts by ASD detrans people who describe how they confused their autistic traits with gender issues. I read about girls who were traumatized by violent porn, sexual harassment or worse. All my clinicians were stumped when I asked about fan fiction— what’s that all about? But detransitioners knew! BDSM? I actually had one therapist AND her boss tell me that that community could be empowering for my sexually inexperienced, ASD daughter. Only detransitioners could contextualize its appeal—and confirm my worst fears.
I learned about Tumblr, eating disorders, family dysfunction, resentment, and estrangement, and I read countless stories of young people growing up isolated and in terrible confusion and pain. Coping the best way they could, they were misled and mistreated by trusted adults. Many of these stories mapped perfectly onto my daughter.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to these insights. They clarified that affirmation and social transition are not benign, neutral interventions (something I instinctively felt, but could not explain), because transition is a game with moving goal posts and changing rules. I realized that most clinicians are easily manipulated and frighteningly uninformed, if not totally captured by this ideology. Many would appear to be outright masochists.
Detransitioner stories showed me that I could not reason or talk my daughter out of this trans path. That nothing mattered more than building trust and connection. That this is not really about gender, but it is about being uncomfortable with yourself and your body. I realized that I am her mirror, and that when she looks at me, she must see love, hope, and acceptance.
My kid is 18 now and, while she still identifies as trans, she does not self-harm anymore and is trying to leave other old bad habits behind. It will take a lot of time and effort to get her mental and physical health back, but I’ve also learned to judge progress in tiny amounts. I understand now that this is a long process—but I’m in it for the long haul with my daughter, and I am patient.
My daughter came out about 2 1/2 years ago. In the meantime, she went to see a psychologist for another problem, like many people these days, she seems to have certain phobias. At some point that psychologist suggested to us that my daughter was “high potential,” which was no doubt true, but she also wanted to test her for autism. At the start, my wife and I decided that labeling her would not be a good idea. Perhaps it was a mistake, in the meantime though we are having her tested.
The problem is very simple: my daughter had already done her social transitioning in school, the school obviously didn't inform us, so the hook sat deep. Apparently she hadn't spoken to her psychologist about that either, and she was very interested in keeping us away from the psychologist, so we couldn't do a family sitting. The psychologist should have been a little bit more careful.
The real blow up came when the local shelter called us and some semi-hysterical man was trying to tell us that our daughter was close to suicide and was suffering deeply mainly because of her relationship with “her abusive mother.” I don't want to use a barnyard expression, but it was BS: no one is gentler than my wife, she can be a bit controlling at times, insisting on regular hours, getting enough sleep, eating well, taking supplements, the usual stuff, but she is also a good listener and a deeply caring person, a deep soul. At this point that we realized that something was deeply wrong and we hadn't noticed.
the real problem is this: all the psychologists in my city seem hell bent on the affirmative care model, which is essentially a conveyor belt to the operating table and a life of hormones. We found one psychiatrist (these are covered by our health insurance) who would have been willing to take her and who was not into that kind of thing, but rather more into systemic psychology and somatic problems, one who would have been willing to accompany my daughter for a while until she could figure out the most obvious thing, her body is not an enemy. My daughter looked her up online and found that she was a non-affirming therapist, and that was that.
There you have it in a nutshell. The trans cult has literally infected the city, the schools, everything. experts and psychologists who say something different are attacked here for being ”transphobic,” a perfectly meaningless word that has become the battle cry for the activists. I am hoping that a new psychologist will be a little bit more differentiated.
If there's anything that is positive, it said my daughter is terrific at school. If she does decide at some point to go through with the ritual of running her body, I hope she'll have a good life with her brains. I've also used some of the texts from the detransitioners for the simple reason that they are honest with their feelings and how things worked out for them. the local shelter, where I spent nearly two hours asking that fellow questions, believes that there is no such thing as a detransitioner and that all parents are tickled pink when their children finally transition, stuffed themselves full of hormones, have their genitals or breasts removed or adapted, and pretend to be the sex, which is fundamentally what they deny exists…, in other words when they really do start performing. I'm using my own brains right now to try and at least stimulate her into thinking a little harder about what it means. She doesn't seem to be suffering at all when we don't talk about it. she has friends, some of them who are pretending to be the opposite sex that they are, she goes out with them, I guess she has fun, maybe she understands that we have reached the end of our tether after nearly three years of worry.
What I understand, is that the tide is beginning to turn, and it is thanks to people like Sinead, Helena, Carey, Cat, and comedians like Ricky Gervais, Dave Chapelle, writers like Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, Even the many Twitter battles we have to fight daily show the activists to be mostly ignorant, rude, vulgar, spoiled drones. Every time a lecturer comes to town to present a book at the university and plead for patience and alternative approaches to the ultimate in conversion therapy, namely the affirmative care model, They are yelled at and even physically attacked. these incidents are important because they draw attention to this insane movement. I'm in touch with a few journalists, but there are cowards and probably underpaid. But a movement is building. I'm also in touch with other parents who are in the same predicament.
For years, I explained to my daughter what the problem with the Internet is. As such it is a phenomenal tool, but in combination with handheld devices, it allows the world outside, with all of its darkness, with all of its crazy salesmanship, with all of its ignorance and cheapness to penetrate the sacred walls or family. Some may argue that this was always the case, adolescence want to separate from their families. Sure: but never did they have such devastating tools to do so. The capacity to brainwash has become lethal.
This is so good. I - and I suspect many others - would benefit so much if you could compile a list of some of the articles you read about ASD and identity formation