How to be a Trans-Educated Rational Parent (TERP), Redux

Are you one of the millions of parents that took Elon Musk’s advice and watched the Daily Wire’s What is a Woman documentary over the last couple days? Good for you! You’ve taken the first step to becoming a TERP. A TERP is something all parents should be…sad but true. Whether or not the gender religion has already captured your child, it has undoubtedly negatively impacted and influenced their lives - and yours -and there is simply no way to justify hiding your head in the sand.

The following article was first published June 28, 2021 here on PITT and, because our site was new, it had a fairly small reach. We hope that, whether you are new to PITT or a steadfast follower of our Substack already, that you will spread the PITT stories and experiences far and wide. Let’s get the attention of the people who are suddenly realizing the extent to which gender ideology has coopted our culture and stifling free speech and upending the reality and lives of families worldwide. Knowledge is power, so let’s keep shining a light on this new fundamentalist religious cult and end it once and for all!

(Update on the author: I originally wrote this to outline what I had learned and what I had tried, based on the sage advice of Stella O’Malley and Sasha Ayad, amongst others, after my teen son’s sudden trans announcement. Last year my son desisted and is now happy, healthy, and thriving. Desistance is, in fact, real—and common it turns out. I promise you, it might not feel like it to you right now (and believe me, I can relate!)—but there is hope.)

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How to be a Trans-Educated Rational Parent

If you’ve found yourself here, odds are your child has announced that they are trans, out of the blue. Unlike some of the people you’ve read about, your spidey sense is tingling and you have a lot of questions. Most likely you never thought you’d hear something like this from your child because they in no way appear to fit the mold of what you’re used to seeing on talk shows or in the news. 

The internet will tell you that you need to celebrate your trans child! It might be hard, but it’s necessary to accept your child for who he or she is, even if it seems strange. 

DO NOT LISTEN — THIS IS BAD ADVICE.

If you are not scared out of your mind about the whole trans thing, you are not up to speed yet. There is a real and immediate threat to your child posed by this new ideology, which is, unfortunately, encouraged and even celebrated by politicians, educators and many well-meaning but grossly uninformed people. 

The internet is populated with very bad advice from trans activists, pharmaceutical companies in disguise, attention-seeking parents and teens, creepy grooming cartoon unicorns, and medical professionals that don’t read source materials. 

Many people or even an elite group of people believing or presenting something as true DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE.

The Argumentum ad Populum is an argument, often emotionally laden, that claims a conclusion is true because most, all, or even an elite group people irrelevantly think, believe, or feel that it is. This argument is characterized here with many examples and shown to be sometimes persuasive but normally fallacious if there is no direct relevant evidence presented for the truth of its conclusion.

If you are not careful, you will wind up hurting your child by subjecting them to experimental drugs and procedures, and mental angst from harmful and confusing so-called social transition, all due to the Madness of Crowds. 

Your teen is not an adult and does not have the maturity to make adult decisions. They are not extra mature because they are gender confused. They are probably less mature or at least the same level of immature as other kids their age and thus especially prone to be drawn to gender ideology during puberty.

Do not be bullied into abdicating your parental role to outsiders with unknown motivations, who will be encouraging your child to disbelieve and mistrust you. Be strong and persevere, because your child needs you to fight for them now, more than ever. In this world, parents are the bad guys and doctors and therapists are accused of conducting “conversion therapy” if they don’t do what your child asks for, when they ask for it, up to and including amputating their body parts.

As a loving parent, if you want to do what’s best, it’s time to get up to speed.

Do Not Despair!

Odds are your child will get through this just fine. Don’t fall into the activists’ trap. 

Some of us are just a few steps ahead of you, so we can give you some advice. We were told to trust others when it came to our kids. That wasn’t good enough for us, so we’ve done our own homework, educated ourselves, and are stepping up to help our kids and to inform other parents that are scared and feeling helpless, like we once were. We’re as much the experts as anyone else now. We are Trans-Educated Rational Parents. You can be one too. 

Are you so sure that “trans” is an immutable state of being, when you really stop and think about it?

Your child is still the same person inside and outside. Trust your instincts. They are probably struggling with the usual challenges of puberty, but in an insane cultural environment where a magical fix is advertised. 

Our Only Horse in the Race is Our Kids

To be a Trans-Educated Rational Parent, you must be: 

Pro-Your Child: We don’t care how our kids dress or how they wear their hair. In fact, many of us encourage our kids to be gender stereotype non-conforming — many of us are gender stereotype non-conforming, quirky people ourselves—as the saying goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. We don’t care about pronouns except that it’s clear they are a gateway drug. 

An Independent Thinker: Questioning an ideology and seeking information and evidence-based care for our children does not make us bigots. You should rightly be skeptical about an ideology that will not permit questions or research, and resorts instead to name-calling if you question. If you are not informed you cannot help look out for your child and give them good advice. 

LGB Supporters. Trans is not the new gay. Gay is a sexual orientation. Trans is telling our kids that their natural bodies are wrong. Gay does not encourage irreversible and harmful body modification. Gay does not require a lifetime of taking hormones and medical treatment.  

Anti-Medicalization of Gender Confusion for Youth: We are scared to death of the experimental, untested, ineffective drugs and surgery wreaking havoc on our children’s healthy bodies — and the politicians, doctors, and activists that are cheering our kids on and willfully ignoring the incontrovertible facts about the dangers of medicalization of an identity. 

I’m Terrified — What Do I Do Next?

First, take a deep breath and keep the following in mind as you read this article.

1.     The Gender Unicorn is made up. Gender is not on a spectrum and gender non-conforming behavior should not be used as evidence of a medical condition. Why is it then, in today’s DSM-5? Interesting question with a complicated answer (hint: not it’s not because of new scientific evidence). You will learn a lot more about this, but that’s a start. There are only two sexes. There is no third gamete. Our understanding of basic biology still holds true. 

2.     Desistance is not a mythical beast. You may already have searched the internet frantically for signs that this might be a phase for your child and come up empty. That’s just because of what people choose to talk about — it’s the internet and there are no police or rules… Desistance happens all the time. For most kids and young adults it’s just a phase — unless you affirm. 

3.     Detransition is real. There is a large and growing community of people that transitioned but then, for various reasons, decided to return to presenting as their natural sex. These people feel very misled and harmed by their experience, often. 

Now that you know that it CAN be okay for your child, read through the following:

Step 1: Opt Out of the Broken “Healthcare” System — it’s just a Transition Conveyor Belt

ALERT: DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILD TO A GENDER CLINIC OR AN “AFFIRMING” THERAPIST! If you do this, your child will be on a path to blockers and wrong sex hormones and surgery almost immediately. 

There is no set training to become a gender therapist, and many in this area do not even know, although it has been known for decades, that gender dysphoria can be temporary and caused by other mental issues (OCD, autism, [+here],trauma, anxiety, distress [+here]) or be a phase in development. Many thus incorrectly assume that if someone has “discovered” they are transgender that the only route is to make them comfortable with this situation either through affirmative counseling or aggressive medicalization. 

In reality, kids are just diagnosing themselves on the internet and medical professionals are agreeing with them. They call this the “affirmative approach”. Affirmation consists of agreeing with your child and further reinforcing harmful negative thoughts and dysphoria which is causing your child distress. In no other area of mental health care will a practitioner encourage someone to persist in harmful thoughts. 

Clinics are a business. They only make money if your child becomes a medical patient for life. Influencers and doctors are often on the payroll of pharmaceutical companies directly or indirectly. They have a vested interest in pushing your child to medicalize, while downplaying the risks and experimental nature of any treatments. This is big business. 

There are some wonderful therapists that will look at your child as a whole person, but they are completely booked by the deluge of parents seeking real help for their confused child. Most of us in the Parent Underground can’t even find help! So, for now you will need to be the expert, and you will have to learn to help your child. Sad but true.

Step 2: Stop Blaming Yourself

It’s society, not you. Nothing you did caused this to happen to your child. Your teen was not “born in the wrong body” so, all your research to try to find a biological cause for this based on some nonsense about gendered brains or hormones in your womb are a waste of time — there is no way to confirm or even test this. 

Your child was subjected to harmful influence unbeknownst to you, combined with very powerful societal motivators. Being teenagers, they are very susceptible to influence and, even more unfortunately, our society has not yet recognized this as the harmful fad it is, so well-meaning schools, religious institutions, trusted medical professionals, journalists, and activists have been providing you and your child with false and misleading information. Schools are even using your taxpayer dollars to pay charismatic young trans people, who are affiliated with drug companies, to push hormones on your kids while glamorizing their surgeries and lifestyle. 

Step 3: Turn off the Internet, and accept that your kid is doing some very unsavory things.

Turn off or restrict and monitor your teen’s access to social media and the internet ASAP, after doing some forensics. Your innocent child is not as innocent as you think, nor is this movement innocent. 

While you were stressing about how you missed that your child is a girl in a boy’s body or vice versa, what was really happening is that your lonely little baby was watching porn or chatting about dysphoria online with random people. Don’t beat yourself up about it. A lot of us parents wasted a lot of time on philosophy before we realized our kids were secretly watching some seriously messed up stuff — rapid onset dysphoria is not a feeling from within — at least not without some outside help. 

This movement is, at its core, about sex and body harm to try to reach an unattainable end state — it’s not rainbows and harmless looking purple gender unicorns (a tool being used to teach your kids the “facts” about gender ideology in health class at school - and sometimes even in science class!). Despite your best efforts your teen has been seeing and doing things on the internet that will shock you after what probably started out as an innocent query, such as a web search for “why am I different?” or “how do I know if I’m gay?”. 

Do a thorough forensic analysis before cutting off access. This will help you understand what your child has been exposed to, what you are up against and why they are thinking that transgender applies to them. Look for hidden apps (two calculator apps is a warning sign), VPNs, and logs showing your child has accessed any of the sites on the list below. Look for alternate logons. Your child has likely adopted an opposite sex online persona and avatar that you need to be aware of. It will probably be either disturbingly cutesy, like anime or a cartoon, and/or highly sexualized. You may even discover, as some of us have, that your child has been interacting with an adult “coach” or groomer. If this is the case, report it to the authorities immediately. Or, perhaps you will find, like some of us, that your child has a peer group of cheerleaders/influencers. Remember, this is not a harmless phase like goth — this will lead to your child taking harmful, exogenous cross-sex hormones (inducing an endocrine disorder) and/or undertaking dangerous surgeries. If they follow this path they will likely be sterile and unable to experience sexual pleasure. They will have to maintain cross-sex hormones for their whole lives, which cause brain function decline and bone mass degradation, amongst other horrifying things. Oh, and after all that, they will still hate their bodies. Probably even more than before. 

Common “resources” for teens — WARNING — these are disturbing — and more disturbingly, this is what your kids are reading and learning from. 

·       Reddit — subreddits abound that your child will have accessed: 

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/egg_irl/

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/MtF

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/ask_transgender

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender 

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/traps

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/traphentai

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/transporn

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/GoneWildTrans

·       https://www.reddit.com/r/femboy

·       Gender-bending anime

·       Discord Servers — your child will have quickly been invited to Discord servers that are supposedly help or support groups, but are rife with groomers. Some examples — transcord, satans children, trans community center, The Cowboys, Chill Frogs, Trans Realm 

·       There are also tons of Youtube hypno meditations and violent pornography sites with negligible/poor underage protections 

·       Find out who the people your kids are interacting with online are in real life. Parents need to know who is influencing their kids.  

Step 4: Get Up To Speed

Learn from ethical, informed therapists and medical professionals that are interested in the outcome of a teen/young adult with a healthy body and a healthy mind. 

Resource guides, including: 

• Genspect

• Gender — A Wider Lens

• Partners for Ethical Care

• Transgender Trend — Resources for Parents 

• Parents of ROGD Kids

• Managing Gender Dysphoria Incongruence in Young People: A Guide for Health Practitioners

• Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine

Step 5: Set firm boundaries with your child.

This new pronouncement of trans should change nothing about the rules of your household and age-appropriate behavior — your teen is still a normal teen and should still be subject to your household rules and oversight — more now than ever, in fact because, as mentioned above, your child has likely violated many house rules involving your internet terms of service. 

It is perfectly acceptable for you to take the firm stance that you do not accept the alternate reality your child is presenting. You are the adult, and your child is looking to you for guidance. If you “see” them as the opposite sex, that will further cement their belief — which is a belief, not a fact and, unlike their real-life body, is not grounded in reality. Contrary to popular belief, doing this is not likely lead to your child’s suicide. In fact, you will likely exacerbate the dysphoria by agreeing with them. It is not common medical practice to reinforce problematic thoughts like dysphorias. So, skip the pronouns and the alternate name, and the clothes and all of that. Some of us took bad advice and allowed this for a time — everyone comes to regret it. Preserve reality for your family. 

Remember, as a parent, you are the strongest influence on your child. You have cared for, loved, and supported this child through thick and thin. You are the one responsible for their raising and well-being. You are the one that will be there throughout his or her life, not the coaches and cheerleaders you will discover that have been influencing your vulnerable child. Do not abdicate that because you are intimidated by this new ideology. 

Step 6: Question the Assumptions and Learn to Counter Them

Learn the common myths and contravening evidence and research. It’s out there, once you sift through the self-serving propaganda: 

Common Myths:

• “Gender” is on a spectrum and you are not stuck with the sex you are “assigned at birth”. False, you either are built to produce small or large gametes. There are only the two options. “Assigned at birth” refers to disorders of sexual development, or intersex. The term has been co-opted by trans activists. If your child’s sex was unambiguous at birth this does not apply to your child. 

• Transgender is not a phase you grow out of or move past. Being transgender is a fixed characteristic, set before birth, that one can “discover”. This is false. People “desist” all the time, but you’d never know that from reading the limited narratives on the internet. 80% of children with early childhood gender dysphoria outgrow it by their late teens. Not much is known about the new phenomenon of teens who develop it at puberty or beyond, but therapists in this crazy gender space will tell you that ~50% of their patients (and these are the most entrenched individuals) desist and stop feeling “transgender”. 

• Go along with your child’s new identity or they will kill themselves. This is false and a scare tactic meant to get your child on the transgender conveyor belt. “Transition” isn’t even proven to alleviate gender dysphoria. Ethical medicine does not prescribe medicine or conduct surgery based on patient’s request or under terroristic threats of suicide if they don’t go along. This should be a huge sign to you that something is amiss. Compare it to eating disorders. Would a doctor perform liposuction because an anorexic patient says they look fat? 

• If you are trans, it’s just how you were born and you will feel happy after “transition”. Tell that to the many detransitioners that changed their minds and now have to fight for appropriate medical care for the various mental and physical repercussions of their “transition’. Once the initial period of reported euphoria wears off, the irreversible body and potentially mind changes, remain. 

• Puberty blockers are safe and reversible.False. Puberty is a full body maturation process, which also involves hormonal effects on the still-developing brain in addition to the development of secondary sex characteristics (which are a natural consequence of your biological sex) — it is unknown what the long-term effects are of disrupting this process, which cannot be turned off and on and then just resume as if nothing ever happened. There has been no study on whether puberty blockers are reversible when used to block puberty for those who are at the right age to go through it (rather than those who start puberty too early, an FDA approved use). The evidence behind the mental health outcomes of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria (which are off-label with the FDA for treating gender dysphoria) has been judged of very poor quality. 

• Transition “treatments” are effective. False. They are only occasionally effective and no one really knows the long-term effects. Also, what are we treating again and what are the goals of the treatment? I bet you can’t answer! 

• Transgender ideology promotion is about civil rights and inclusion. False. Transgenderism is about money. There are billions to be made selling hormones and plastic surgeries to people that believe they will make them happy. Right now this field is entirely unregulated and so it’s like the Wild West with money to be made risk free and, as you might imagine, pharmaceutical companies are taking full advantage, as they have time and time again throughout our modern history. Gender clinics, providing patient requested medical care for an invisible condition have popped up in droves. Spokespersons (ie influencers) for Plume, a mail order hormone provider, have probably even been invited to speak at your child’s school, under the guise of a diversity and inclusion program. 

• Medical “treatments” are only a last resort in transgender treatment. There are many ways to be “trans”! False. There is no long exploratory period or psychological assessment. There is no longer a requirement to live as the opposite gender for a year or more before hormones and/or surgery. You should be very very worried because, if your child persists with a trans identification, they will likely proceed to these extreme and aggressive treatments. You can simply order hormones from Plume online or walk into a college campus clinic, or Planned Parenthood and get these hormones on the first visit. Sometimes even over Zoom without an in-person visit. They will be asked to sign an informed consent form saying the long-term risks are not known, and that there are known dangerous and harmful side effects to this experimental “treatment” for something that has no physical symptoms at all. All this before they can even legally drink in the US. Oh, and these treatments all have euphemistic names. They have a whole different ring to them when you call them what they really are: “gender affirmation surgery” = castration/sterilization + plastic surgery; top surgery = elective mastectomy. Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) = testosterone blockers (for boys) + cross-sex exogenous hormones that are off-label (not FDA approved for treating dysphoria). “Feminization” surgery = plastic surgery to restructure the bones in your face. 

Step 7: Help stop the madness — for your kid and others.

Our kids are part of the first wave of internet/societally-induced transgenderism. This is a new phenomenon and our kids are poised to be the unwitting test subjects of drugs and medical procedures that are only now starting to be tested on animals. It’s human experimentation like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, but with all of our society complicit. Someday we will say about transgenderism what we said about Tuskegee: “What was done cannot be undone, but we can end the silence,” he said. “We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye, and finally say, on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful and I am sorry.”[17]

For now, however, our society has fully bought into and invested in this gender nonsense — sales reps promoting cross-gender hormones are even invited to high schools to recruit kids under the guise of “diversity and inclusion training”!) — and it’s going to take a long time to get ourselves out of this. Currently, there are more parent guides for convincing your kids not to get a tattoo because it’s permanent and you will regret it than on this obviously much more serious issue! 

Eventually, people will realize that this is pseudoscience akin to Flat Earther conspiracy theories. Concerned citizens are starting to raise awareness about the power of this movement and its ability to influence your child and to lead them down a dangerous path. Sweden, the UK and Finland have been taking a good hard look at the evidence and are starting to realize that it does not support the aggressive interventions which have been recklessly scaled up from careful treatments of a very small number of people in the past. 

Your child does not have time to await the return of common sense and rational policy because as soon as they hit 18 years old they can get harmful, experimental hormones that induce an endocrine disorder and cause brain changes with NO gatekeeping. Do any of you feel that you would have been mature enough at 18 to make a decision as big as this, when we know the pre-frontal cortex does not fully mature until 26? 

You need to act now. 

Natural Allies

As part of the last line of defense, parents need all the help we can get as we organize, research, conduct studies, write about our experiences, and align with natural allies including: 

• Liberals devoted to free and open discourse 

• The LGB community, which recognizes that sexual orientation has absolutely nothing to do with transgenderism and that the current ideology erodes their rights and promotes homophobia 

• Feminists who see that the denial of sex poses a real and immediate threat to hard-won women’s sex-based rights

• Doctors and therapists that have lived through the repressed memory scandal and opioid crisis and understand their obligation to first “do no harm”. 

• Many transgender and transsexual adults who are appalled at the medicalization of our youth for a self-identity that has taken on unmistakable tones of religious fervor. 

• Black men and women who are realizing that Black Lives Matter, Inc is more gender ideology motivated than it originally appeared. 

Always remember, a few years from now, people will see “transition” as the horrible experiment it is. Even though you were told it was the only choice for your kid, YOU will be blamed for the damage done to your child in the eyes of history. Of course, you will also be the one picking up the pieces and trying to help your child when all the activists and glitter moms are long gone. 

Join Other Parents to Fight Back for your Child

Bring your brainpower, your passion, and your deep and abiding love for your child to bear to make a difference. We can use all the educated, rational parents we can get! Get connected with other parents that are standing up to gender ideology - you can find parent organizations through Genspect.org.