Let The Child Decide

I am not a parent, nor am I someone who has ever thought that I was trans. I am a 21-year-old, female, pre-law university student. I am sharing my personal story because, while it does not have to do with gender, I feel that it closely parallels the experience of children who are sucked into the trans cult. My perspective is one which illustrates the dangers of allowing outside authority figures to influence children behind the backs of parents, and guards against the “let the kids decide for themselves!!” attitude that so many well-meaning (but sadly naïve) adults profess. 

I would like to preface this by saying that I am not in any way a conservative or a right-winger. I am extremely liberal on most issues (all except for the trans issue, in fact). I am staunchly pro-choice. I support the rights of LGB individuals and I proudly identify myself as a feminist. There is a 2017 Women’s March sweatshirt hanging in my closet. My perspective on this issue does not come from some sort of hidden bigotry, but from my own experiences.

When I was very young, I was obsessed with ballet. As a young girl from the age of about three to four, I would demand that my mother play and replay The Nutcracker for hours on end as I danced around the room in a pink tutu, having precisely memorized the steps to each routine. I started taking ballet classes at a YWCA near my neighborhood at a young age, but soon I decided I wanted to take dance a bit more seriously. I began training at a preprofessional company when I was eleven years old. I understand that many readers may not be familiar with the world of professional ballet, so there are some things I should probably clear up before continuing. This was not the stereotypical Angelina Ballerina dance-class-once-a-week routine that many families of little girls are familiar with. This company was more reminiscent of the training regimens that Olympic gymnasts endure. The coaches were predominantly male, and none had children of their own, which I suppose should have been one of the first red flags- but I was eleven. Of course, I didn’t catch that one. 

The coaches were nice at first. They seemed encouraging, like they genuinely wanted to push the dancers to be their very best. As a child I was always an overachiever- the stereotypical “pleasure to have in class” and “gifted kid” (I had been a grade ahead since elementary school and earned the top grades in every one of my classes)- so naturally I craved validation from authority figures. This quality, which has vastly benefited me in university and been responsible for my high academic achievement along a pre-law pathway, would prove to devastate much of my childhood and leave me with damage that would take almost a decade to repair.

As I continued to train with the ballet company, the coaches gradually began to become less “nice”. Their criticisms started to sound less encouraging and more vicious. That validation that I craved so much began to become few and far-between. They requested that I up my training hours to six days a week, every day after school from 4 pm-9:30 pm and weekends from 11 am-6:30 pm. My parents were hesitant, but I insisted that I wanted to go along with the coaches’ demands. I was about 12 or 13 at this point and my entire sense of self-esteem had begun to be reliant on my coaches’ opinion of me. Of course, I wanted to do anything that I thought would please them.

My parents were well-meaning and slightly naïve about the demands of the dance world, so they went along with it and continued to dole out ridiculous amounts of tuition to fund the increase in my training. By the time I was 14, it had taken over my life. I couldn’t participate in after-school activities because I had training. I couldn’t go shopping with my friends like other teen girls could because I had training on the weekends. The time that I spent at school and on Sundays (the only day of the week free from dance) I spent in intense anxiety. I was terrified of the coaches. The verbal abuse had become so frequent and so abrasive that I felt dizzy and nauseated from fear as my mother drove me to the studio every day. I would realize only years later that what I was experiencing was abuse. The coaches would scream and yell at dancers for hours on end with vitriol and disdain. They took control over every aspect of our lives. I began to live in fear every minute that I spent around them because there was no telling who would be insulted or screamed at next. You could be yelled at for the way you were standing even while you weren’t training if they thought your posture was not adequate. You could be yelled at for leaning against the wall while taking a break, or for carrying your bag in a way that they didn’t like, or for having nails that weren’t cut down to nubs. I remember on one occasion a coach hurled a shoe in rage (a men’s sneaker, not a ballet shoe) at a young male dancer who had made a mistake, narrowly avoiding hitting him. They tried to turn us against our parents and anyone outside of the dance world. They told us to focus less on academics and schoolwork- it was a distraction from dance. They would engage in aggressive arguments with parents in front of dancers. On one occasion the coaches shamed the parents in front of the children because they could not afford to cover the costs of traveling to and from competitions. They would laugh and celebrate when they made a young dancer cry, either by screaming at and insulting the child or by pushing their hips down into a split or otherwise physically hurting them. They had yardsticks and would slam them against the metal ballet barre close to a dancer in order to scare or intimidate the child.

I lived five years of my adolescence being treated like a military recruit. My well-meaning, naïve parents, who subscribed largely to the ideology of “trusting the child”. had no idea what was going on. They would never have allowed it to continue if they did. But they didn’t. Why would I ever have told them? I relied on these coaches- as victims of abuse usually do- for validation. The validation was incredibly rare, but when it came it was satisfying and I felt good about myself (until the inevitable next harsh insult). I thought that these adults in positions of power were looking out for me, just trying to make me better. I thought all of the treatment was warranted. In my view, my parents were in the wrong. They, I thought, just didn’t understand how important dance was to me. They were holding me back from my true potential, from being who I truly was. The coaches understood my potential, they were looking out for me. They were making me better. So what if it required a little sacrifice? I lived in cognitive dissonance. I was terrified of them but I couldn’t leave. Leaving would require giving up the sense of validation that these adults had carefully groomed for the past five years. 

If I had talked to my parents about any of this, they would have been understanding. They would have encouraged me to quit without shame. As I know now as a mature adult, my parents were the ones with my best interest at heart. But I didn’t know I could have gone to them. How do you tell your parents you’re being verbally abused on a daily basis? It seemed embarrassing to admit, to say the least - sort of like telling your mom you’re getting your lunch money stolen in elementary school. Nobody wants to be that kid. You feel weak and pathetic. And after all, the coaches (as far as I knew) were just making me better! So I just kept going. 

I left the company at 15. Eternal gratitude to whatever primordial ancestor blessed me with the evolutionary self-preservation instinct that somehow managed to win out, because I was passively suicidal at the time as a result of the coaches’ abuse and I truly don’t think I would be here today if I hadn’t made the decision to get out. I was in the car with my mom when we had the conversation. I had a sort of “Eureka!” moment and finally blurted out “can I just not do dance anymore? is that an option?”. Of course, she said yes, and that was that. It was a short conversation, but I felt like a 200-pound weight had been removed from my shoulders. 

Sadly, the years spent in my own personal hell didn’t come without a cost. I would spend the next two years in therapy for the anxiety disorder I had developed from the experience. As I know now, the years in the ballet company were spent in a state of toxic stress. Toxic stress is a prolonged and chronic type of anxiety which, if left untreated during crucial stages of adolescent development, can permanently alter brain structure, which is what happened in my case. I was exhibiting symptoms of what I now know resembles complex PTSD for years after leaving the company. I was vomiting daily, multiple times a day, from the anxiety. I would wake up in the morning and just immediately go to the bathroom and throw up for 30 minutes or more. The excessive vomiting caused me to develop an abdominal hernia and lose three teeth. My hair fell out in clumps and I was told that my immune system had been so wrecked by the years of chronic stress that I had developed partial alopecia. Some of my hair is still gone. I was severely malnourished because I was barely eating since I was constantly nauseated. I had nightmares about the coaches for about three years and started having terrible insomnia. 

I’m sharing my experience for multiple reasons. The first is that I feel like I can strongly identify with the experiences of detransitioners. I read Helena’s famous substack piece on her transition and detransition last year. It reminded me of my life. Her experience with being sucked into the trans cult, manipulated by groomer-esque adults and then having to swallow her pride and tell her family she no longer identified as trans was starkly familiar. The second reason is that I want to prevent other children from getting involved with ANY ill-intentioned authority figures who may attempt to come between them and their parents. My coaches were there to cause the abuse, but who was there to pay for my therapy afterwards? Who was there to make sure that I didn’t end up hospitalized from malnutrition at 15 when I was so nauseous from anxiety that I didn’t eat for four days? Not the coaches. My parents were.

See, that’s the thing about these “cults”. These people are always there to cause the problem. As other individuals here on PITT have described, the groomers are always there to make sure they cement an identity in the child’s head. But who’s there for the child when they detransition and are now left with life-altering consequences? Who’s there when the child begins to have mental health issues? These individuals never stay to pick up the pieces they’ve broken. They break things and then leave and move on to their next target. And the ones left to fix things at the end are usually the child themself and their parents- the same individuals who the groomers attempted to turn the child against. An individual who trained at the same company as me (and who still trains there) began to identify as trans a couple years ago. I wonder just how much of that trans identity is authentic versus how much is formed from trauma. 

My point, overall, is that I feel as if we’re seeing a dangerous shift in today’s generation toward distrust of family. I see the same behaviors in these gender groomers that I saw in my abusive coaches. Validation-bombing children in order to reshape their self-esteem and sense of identity. Creating a barrier between children and parents. Teaching those children to distrust their parents. I see all of these behaviors with “trans” kids, and frankly I am incredibly worried for the mental health implications of this. I was driven to become suicidal because of similar behavior and I had no preexisting mental health conditions. I am neurotypical and, before the abuse, never had even an ounce of anxiety, depression, or anything of the sort. Many of these trans kids DO have pre-existing mental health issues. Imagine the effects on THEIR mental health- all while our mainstream culture applauds it, sending them into further confusion.