Letter to a Friend, Part Two

Recently, I wrote a “Letter to a Friend” who had asked if I was OK, not recognizing the emotional devastation wreaked by my trans son's “coming out” a couple of years ago. This friend had attributed my recent email silence to some minor hand surgery I had and, I don't know… life. His eager response to my description of distress included great sympathy, reassurance that he was “still here” (i.e., tolerated my gender-critical perspective), and an offer of “comfort and support” despite confessing he knew little about the issue. My reply was instantaneous, though I have yet to hit SEND.

My friend, I appreciate your compassion. Do you wonder at my concern that you might stop reading, or are you merely reassuring me? I ask because I wonder if you realize that I have been rejected by old friends and been accused of being a right-wing dupe, that other people have lost jobs and even custody of their children for being on the "wrong side" of this issue in this “supposed” democracy, merely for challenging the brand-new, entirely ideological orthodoxy.

I appreciate and treasure our many years of friendship, so it hurts me to have to say this. I am truly sorry, but it will no longer be enough for you to be a ‘good German.’ This holocaust that has swept up my middle son, indoctrinated my youngest son and entire generations, and destroyed my family, is destroying many, many more people than I can even fathom, and politicians are tripping over each other to cement the switch into place, to make sure this nightmare never ends.

My son feels different from his peers, dissociated, outcast. Leaving aside the historical revisionism that years of COVID isolation and Tumblr immersion have wreaked on his imagination, these outcast feelings color and reshape his high school memories. Meanwhile, his IQ is around 150, above the 99.9th percentile. In our small city of 170,000, approximately 12 high school students his age or older were conversationally matched (statistically speaking) to him, in a city with six high schools and countless homeschoolers; higher or lower IQ doesn't make one better or inferior, just different, but the difference can be devastating if you can't connect with others. He has ADHD--vulnerable. He suspected for years he had autism, but stopped chasing an adult autism diagnosis when the idea of transitioning to a woman entered his head--vulnerable. I could go on and on with reasons for him to want to reinvent himself in the most drastic way possible--literally, I've half a dozen more ready to go, not the least of which were his politics (as an extremely compassionate far-left cis-het white man, he felt he embodied oppression, and he hated himself for it; self-hatred was practically his motto)--but the bottom line is, his body was never meant to tolerate such high levels of estradiol. He'll never father (let alone mother) children, no matter what, simply because of what he's already done to his body. The only proven effect of long-term cross-sex hormone treatment is increased mortality; improved mental health has not been shown and, in fact, is consistently, categorically worse in transitioned transgender patients (even in gender-affirming countries like Sweden) than in the general population.

I don't have the moral or legal authority or responsibility to tell a grown man or woman (fully informed, fully consenting) what to do with their bodies or their lives. I've always supported trans rights in the sense that no one deserves abuse or discrimination. But this indoctrination is beginning in elementary schools--give me a child until he's seven, and...

There is no differential diagnosis going on. In most cases, it appears there is no diagnosis going on at all. Like the majority of young transitioners, my son diagnosed himself. He told his psychiatrist, who immediately washed his hands of it all and sent him to a gender-affirming therapist. She sent him to Planned Parenthood and, after one visit, he walked out with an estradiol prescription. Yes, he was 25 years old, but, again, he had issues on top of issues, yet they all shriveled under the force of almighty Gender Dysphoria. Even if that were his only issue...do we treat anorexia with fen-phen? I affirm you as a fat person; let's “fix” that body.

I did not mean to blather on. This is what I meant to say: you're either with me, or you're not. I don't need someone to just feel sorry for me while they support, for example, Tim Walz. Truly, if you care about people, about what's happening in our schools, in our hospitals, in our medical clinics, in our halls of government, to children, to women, to gays and lesbians, to the autistic, the bullied, and to other vulnerable populations (including trans), you will not content yourself with "not knowing anything about gender treatment apart from what you read in the papers." Inform yourself. Then do something about it. That is the “comfort and support” I need.