I thought this would be over by now. I really did. You're smart. Really smart. And a staunch feminist -- like I raised you to be. But it's been over a year now. And it's not over. Not even close. And it's killing me. Bringing me to tears day after day as you deny reality and set yourself on a path of self-denial and self-destruction.
I, too, thrash about looking for errors I may have made that led our daughter to her trans identity. I accepted a work transfer to another country and my husband stayed behind because of his own work. But he came to us once a month and stayed for 10 days or so each time, and called and wrote all the time. We were a family, no two ways about it. Still, I wonder . . .
Thankyou for sharing your story, I can relate to it as it sounds like our story also. We were so afraid of our daughter turning 18 and losing her. We have been having a patience degree... understanding that her brain is not yet finished forming and not ready to make irreversible damage to her healthy female body. It’s been the hardest 5 years of our lives... what a challenge!!!! Reading other parents experiences has been really helpful.
Taking social media off our phone has done wonders to our comunication and feeling less anxious. We are living one day at a time.
Keep on unconditionally loving her! And by not affirming you are supporting her. We have told our daughter this. That support doesn't always come in the form of agreeing wirh everything but questioning it too. I used to get the eye roll but not so much anymore. Keep trying to connect with her without addressimg gender. I know its hard but it can't be in every part of your life. And take care of you. Do not feel guilt for some" me" time and rest. This is a long journey, but i still have hope it will change for the better. Stay strong ❤️
This was planned long ago. My niece was brought up the same way. Going to marches and wearing vagina hats, going to support riots, with my sister. She didn't realize those rallies and safe spaces are all connected. I mentioned not sending my niece to a college in CA. She was too young and innocent. She went anyway and was indoctrinated in about 1 year. My sister is supporting this nonsense, and I won't give into the lie. I have other children I need to protect from the contagion so won't be participating. I think playing along is making it worse to be honest. My 82 year old father was reprimanded as well for calling her the wrong gender.
Disclaimer: I’m a parent with two kids under ten and neither is trans-identified, so I haven’t gone through what you’ve experienced.
“I thought this would be over by now. I really did. You're smart. Really smart. And a staunch feminist—like I raised you to be.”
Reading the beginning of this piece, I thought it was going to be about an adult child, mid-twenties at the youngest. I don’t think we can reasonably expect teenagers to see through a social contagion simply because they’re intelligent. All throughout history, very intelligent people, even adults, have believed in things that seem ridiculous to many of us. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a medical doctor and the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He believed two girls in Cottingley, England had captured real fairies on film. The fairies were paper cutouts.
Re: your daughter’s psychiatrist, they always want to know if patients have been sexually abused. Unless there’s more here you haven’t told us, I wouldn’t necessarily read that question as parent-blaming. Any day of the year, you can Google “mother’s boyfriend” and find a bunch of stories about crimes against children.
Lots of teenagers rebel against their parents’ beliefs or ideology. It’s just your bad luck that you happen to live in a time when one of the common alternative ideologies is trans ideology in its current form.
We as parents have not realized by the time our children express interest in the topic of “gender”, they have been steeped in targeted propaganda for years, and we - foolishly trusting schools to still act “in the interests of the parent” - have missed the boat. Are we supposed to isolate our children from the world completely? Control every aspect of our children’s lives? Live as the Amish, or Hasidic Jews? How do we combat an ideology we’ve mistakenly thought unbelievable, and many of our children believe wholehweartedly. So how do we fight - and win - against our children, who in many cases are front-line troops led by the adversaries we are to overcome?
'Going trans' seems like a craze. But it's instituted + pushed by *adults.*
Many in the comments call it a cult - for good reason. Cults seek to generate distrust in family, and ultimately, separation. That gives the 'cult priests' satisfaction, a sense of superiority, and greater control over the cult members.
I suspect that for the TRAs, many of them experienced (or at least believe they experienced) bad family situations. So they believe their personal situation is universal. They conclude the problem is with "family." So they have contempt for that and want to smash it and remake the world in their own image. Everyone needs to be like them, to think like them. This is the essence of cult behavior. ("My experience is the most important thing in the world!")
It's like a little kid playing with a doll: a bully comes up and rips the head off the doll. The kid cries, then decides, to make themself feel better they're going to rip the heads off the dolls of others. So everyone will be equally miserable.
That's always the temptation to the bullied individual: to become a narcissistic cry-bully themselves, exponentially furthering the damage done to them.
To me, they are recreating their own (real or imagined) trauma, rebellion, and blindness in others. And, of course, they mistake feelings for facts.
I am in agreement with you. And it is my belief that the history of where we are now can be traced back for hundreds of years. I have discussions with the few friends/colleagues I have left who stand firm with our duty to DO NO HARM. There is quite a world history of mass psychological control. Even of the most educated & intelligent humans. And now Israel is at war.
There is also a world history of sexual harrassment mainly by males, mainly targeting females, and ranging from low-level events such as being stared at or commented on in a sexual way, through groping and upskirting, to assault and rape.
A serious assault may never come to light, since the victim is made to feel ashamed or is bullied into silence; even minor sexual hassles, repeated almost daily, and combined with the unpleasantness of puberty itself, must give many young teenagers a strong unspoken motive to escape from their femaleness; and now, gender ideology and the internet appear to offer the means to do just that.
So many different factors coming together to make up this awful situation!
Why is this so damn scripted? Are we in an alien operated society?
My situation is similar to so many here, and vice versa.
In our case it goes back to 2015/16, maybe earlier. The pandemic wasn’t even on the radar yet. But the Internet was, friend groups were, and schools were indoctrinating and indoctrinated. My ex husband was also on the Trans train... I was outnumbered and completely ostracized. I am wondering what will become of so many lost young people.
Oh my goodness this sounds absolutely torturous. For me, I was very quickly denounced & estranged. Haven’t seen my son for 2 1/2 years now. But living with this under your roof for so long & it still lingering, I cannot imagine the anger you must feel
I'd love to know how many of us are estranged. Do you have other kids? Are they allies? Did they alienate or estrange? I have one older son who is an ally. He was alienated when his brother was living with him. He's alienated or estranged (not sure which) because I nicely called him out on a lie as to why we weren't invited to his wedding. Of course there is no discussion if it's an ally. How do supposedly intelligent, family members become so ignorant? Wouldn't you want to know why someone thinks they are the opposite sex, or why they are self-id so many other diagnosis? I'm so tired of being in this cult.
I have 2 other kids & yes, they are both allies & it is very difficult to talk about. Like everyone, it is altering/destroying our relationship. Today at least, I am done with it.
Painful..
Thank you for sharing your testimony
I, too, thrash about looking for errors I may have made that led our daughter to her trans identity. I accepted a work transfer to another country and my husband stayed behind because of his own work. But he came to us once a month and stayed for 10 days or so each time, and called and wrote all the time. We were a family, no two ways about it. Still, I wonder . . .
Thankyou for sharing your story, I can relate to it as it sounds like our story also. We were so afraid of our daughter turning 18 and losing her. We have been having a patience degree... understanding that her brain is not yet finished forming and not ready to make irreversible damage to her healthy female body. It’s been the hardest 5 years of our lives... what a challenge!!!! Reading other parents experiences has been really helpful.
Taking social media off our phone has done wonders to our comunication and feeling less anxious. We are living one day at a time.
Keep on unconditionally loving her! And by not affirming you are supporting her. We have told our daughter this. That support doesn't always come in the form of agreeing wirh everything but questioning it too. I used to get the eye roll but not so much anymore. Keep trying to connect with her without addressimg gender. I know its hard but it can't be in every part of your life. And take care of you. Do not feel guilt for some" me" time and rest. This is a long journey, but i still have hope it will change for the better. Stay strong ❤️
This was planned long ago. My niece was brought up the same way. Going to marches and wearing vagina hats, going to support riots, with my sister. She didn't realize those rallies and safe spaces are all connected. I mentioned not sending my niece to a college in CA. She was too young and innocent. She went anyway and was indoctrinated in about 1 year. My sister is supporting this nonsense, and I won't give into the lie. I have other children I need to protect from the contagion so won't be participating. I think playing along is making it worse to be honest. My 82 year old father was reprimanded as well for calling her the wrong gender.
Yes Anne-Marie; agreed. Multi-factorial culmination of events over time bring us to the darkness of today. & WWW III in unhidden force.
Disclaimer: I’m a parent with two kids under ten and neither is trans-identified, so I haven’t gone through what you’ve experienced.
“I thought this would be over by now. I really did. You're smart. Really smart. And a staunch feminist—like I raised you to be.”
Reading the beginning of this piece, I thought it was going to be about an adult child, mid-twenties at the youngest. I don’t think we can reasonably expect teenagers to see through a social contagion simply because they’re intelligent. All throughout history, very intelligent people, even adults, have believed in things that seem ridiculous to many of us. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a medical doctor and the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He believed two girls in Cottingley, England had captured real fairies on film. The fairies were paper cutouts.
Re: your daughter’s psychiatrist, they always want to know if patients have been sexually abused. Unless there’s more here you haven’t told us, I wouldn’t necessarily read that question as parent-blaming. Any day of the year, you can Google “mother’s boyfriend” and find a bunch of stories about crimes against children.
Lots of teenagers rebel against their parents’ beliefs or ideology. It’s just your bad luck that you happen to live in a time when one of the common alternative ideologies is trans ideology in its current form.
We as parents have not realized by the time our children express interest in the topic of “gender”, they have been steeped in targeted propaganda for years, and we - foolishly trusting schools to still act “in the interests of the parent” - have missed the boat. Are we supposed to isolate our children from the world completely? Control every aspect of our children’s lives? Live as the Amish, or Hasidic Jews? How do we combat an ideology we’ve mistakenly thought unbelievable, and many of our children believe wholehweartedly. So how do we fight - and win - against our children, who in many cases are front-line troops led by the adversaries we are to overcome?
'Going trans' seems like a craze. But it's instituted + pushed by *adults.*
Many in the comments call it a cult - for good reason. Cults seek to generate distrust in family, and ultimately, separation. That gives the 'cult priests' satisfaction, a sense of superiority, and greater control over the cult members.
I suspect that for the TRAs, many of them experienced (or at least believe they experienced) bad family situations. So they believe their personal situation is universal. They conclude the problem is with "family." So they have contempt for that and want to smash it and remake the world in their own image. Everyone needs to be like them, to think like them. This is the essence of cult behavior. ("My experience is the most important thing in the world!")
It's like a little kid playing with a doll: a bully comes up and rips the head off the doll. The kid cries, then decides, to make themself feel better they're going to rip the heads off the dolls of others. So everyone will be equally miserable.
That's always the temptation to the bullied individual: to become a narcissistic cry-bully themselves, exponentially furthering the damage done to them.
To me, they are recreating their own (real or imagined) trauma, rebellion, and blindness in others. And, of course, they mistake feelings for facts.
Thank you for sharing this. What a wonderful love you have for your daughter!
Your story is so similar to ours. My heart breaks for all of us trapped in this ideology.
So many of us have this story ❤️ I keep it saying this too, I thought this would be over already....18minths and counting 😔
But I do have hope that the tide is turning. But far too many have been harmed (physically and mentally) already.
I am in agreement with you. And it is my belief that the history of where we are now can be traced back for hundreds of years. I have discussions with the few friends/colleagues I have left who stand firm with our duty to DO NO HARM. There is quite a world history of mass psychological control. Even of the most educated & intelligent humans. And now Israel is at war.
There is also a world history of sexual harrassment mainly by males, mainly targeting females, and ranging from low-level events such as being stared at or commented on in a sexual way, through groping and upskirting, to assault and rape.
A serious assault may never come to light, since the victim is made to feel ashamed or is bullied into silence; even minor sexual hassles, repeated almost daily, and combined with the unpleasantness of puberty itself, must give many young teenagers a strong unspoken motive to escape from their femaleness; and now, gender ideology and the internet appear to offer the means to do just that.
So many different factors coming together to make up this awful situation!
Sending prayers for you and your daughter, mama. Keep fighting for her and keep loving her!
Why is this so damn scripted? Are we in an alien operated society?
My situation is similar to so many here, and vice versa.
In our case it goes back to 2015/16, maybe earlier. The pandemic wasn’t even on the radar yet. But the Internet was, friend groups were, and schools were indoctrinating and indoctrinated. My ex husband was also on the Trans train... I was outnumbered and completely ostracized. I am wondering what will become of so many lost young people.
Oh my goodness this sounds absolutely torturous. For me, I was very quickly denounced & estranged. Haven’t seen my son for 2 1/2 years now. But living with this under your roof for so long & it still lingering, I cannot imagine the anger you must feel
I'd love to know how many of us are estranged. Do you have other kids? Are they allies? Did they alienate or estrange? I have one older son who is an ally. He was alienated when his brother was living with him. He's alienated or estranged (not sure which) because I nicely called him out on a lie as to why we weren't invited to his wedding. Of course there is no discussion if it's an ally. How do supposedly intelligent, family members become so ignorant? Wouldn't you want to know why someone thinks they are the opposite sex, or why they are self-id so many other diagnosis? I'm so tired of being in this cult.
Me too.
I have 2 other kids & yes, they are both allies & it is very difficult to talk about. Like everyone, it is altering/destroying our relationship. Today at least, I am done with it.
We're the same. We're exactly the same.