Letter to a Friend, Part One

I received an email from a long-distance friend yesterday, expressing concern after a long silence following my minor hand surgery. Indeed, I had deliberately paused communications because I could no longer tolerate my friend's obtuseness regarding my adult son's transition two years ago, which my friend celebrated in a glowing email at the time and subsequently treated as one might have treated my son's move to another city, or hiring for a new job. Yesterday, this friend broke the silence by sending a concerned email asking about my hand and was I okay? Yes, I said, on the hand.

Nevertheless, I can't say I am well. The nightmare of my son's destroying himself from the inside out continues. The nightmare of being cast as the villain, the fascist, the abuser, and the enemy by an intolerant, tyrannical society posing as tolerant, posing as progressive, pushing ideology as science and institutionalizing it in education, law, and medicine continues. I have spent hundreds–well over a thousand–hours studying medical journal articles, books, reviews, and anything I could get my hands on over the past two years, trying to make sense of my child's new life, trying to justify the complete eradication of his history (which we're not allowed to discuss, or show pictures of, or acknowledge--let alone mourn--in any way), the deification of this new identity, the supremacy of this new science, the infallibility of this singular treatment. There is no sense. There is no justification. There is no science--just dogma and coercion and grooming, greed and megalomania and self-justification. It's the most powerful cult of our times.

Have you read the Cass Review? I've skimmed the first 100 pages and made do with summaries and reviews for the rest. Great Britain was absolutely justified in shutting down the Tavistock Clinic and rightly horrified that it ever operated as it did in the first place. And yes, I've also read some of the spurious American criticisms of the Cass Review, such as Scientific American's, which are heavy on bluster and indignation but, oh, so light on the “scientific.” I also can't tell you how many times I've read, always without attribution, that children as young as three know their gender identity. I could go on for pages on this topic alone, but I just want to emphasize that, as far as the science of gender theory goes, there's no "there" there.

I’d heard of the affirmation thing, back before I started doing research, back before it was my child, and it sounded harmless enough–even kind. And I am sure that you, a lifelong liberal, believe you are being kind. But please don't mistake indulgence, passivity, or acquiescence for kindness anymore; lives are being destroyed, while loved ones are shamed for their distress. What you think you are so kindly affirming in general are likely the anguished escape fantasies of arrested adolescence, the tortured distortions of neurological, psychological, emotional, and/or physical trauma, and, increasingly, childhood playacting that triggers a guardian's (not necessarily a parent's--could be a teacher's, coach's, principal's, minister's, school counselor's...) need to play the white knight or act on their unacknowledged homophobia.

I won't turn this into a scholarly rebuttal of gender theory (although I could) or an angry diatribe against the smug allies and former friends who think they know more about my child than I do because they read the simple-minded propaganda somewhere (“gender identity is innate”; “a woman is whatever a person who identifies as a woman feels a woman is”), and I'm just too stupid or regressive or Catholic to understand it. I do understand it; I just reject it, facts in hand. What I will say, with the full understanding that you may stop reading or may already have stopped reading at any point, is this:

On the day [my child's name] was born, the nurse midwife handed my baby straight from the birth canal to my grateful arms and, after waiting patiently a couple of moments, asked, "Well, what is it?" No doctor "assigned" my baby's sex at birth. I looked, I saw, I announced what everyone has known for hundreds of thousands of years on sight: my baby was a boy.

From that moment on, I nursed him, I bathed him, I changed him, I lulled him to sleep, I played with him, I fed him, I dressed him, I sang to him, I read to him, I laughed with him, I cried with him, I talked to him, I listened to him, I helped him with his homework, I prayed with him, I cheered him on, I fought for him, I chauffeured him, I knew his secret crushes, I stayed up with him, I cherished his hopes and dreams, I held him close to my heart as he spread his wings to make his own way in the world--and you're telling me I just didn't know he was a girl?

This is gender theory, my friend. It's the same old gender stereotypes I fought against in my twenties and thirties dressed up as progressivism, intolerance tricked out as tolerance, with the most vulnerable being manipulated and destroyed to resounding applause, irrevocable destruction in its wake. Oh, and in case you've forgotten, I know what it “feels like” to be a woman. My son–God bless his tortured, deluded, exploited soul–does not, nor should he be expected to.

No, I'm not okay. But thank you for asking. If you are still with me, and you care to read just one good article pertaining to one aspect of this issue, here's a link:

Affirming Trans Identities is Harmful.

Otherwise, have a good life.