Looking For A Place To Fit In

By the summer of 2020, I had already had a trans-identified kid for a few years. I had joined an online forum of parents and chatted with parents of both boys and girls. However, after some time I realized that we parents of boys had our own special concerns. (Let them wear what they want? But a boy in a skirt is a little different than a girl in a hoodie!)

I decided to connect with a few other parents of boys, and we started chatting during that summer of COVID. Over the next few months, other parents of boys heard about our group, and I decided to make us an official boys’ group under the PROGDK umbrella. Little did I know what floodgates I would open. Within six months, over 100 parents of trans-identified boys would join my group. The parents who joined our group were all different. Some were conservative, some liberal, some had their kids in public school, some in private, some homeschooled. Some were religious, others completely secular.  The onslaught of families almost dragged me under, but I kept paddling because I realized that almost every parent that came forward had the same story to tell. It got to the point where I would read emails going yeah, yeah, I already know your story. No need to even tell me.

They all had some combination of giftedness, autistic traits, being nerdy, quirky, or socially awkward, and all spent lots of time online searching for answers. They weren’t feminine boys, but they also didn’t display the rugged manliness often depicted in our society. Many even seemed fearful to be male because that put them in the category of what was deemed to be toxic. All had announced a trans identity out of the blue.

And so, as we parents came together. It was an eye-opening experience unlike any other. These boys were virtually identical. I’ve led this group for four years now and we parents have become increasingly frustrated at how our sons are portrayed. Most of us are in our 40s or 50s and we remember the same type of boys from the ‘80s and ‘90s. They didn’t have many friends in high school, or if they did, they were friends with the other computer nerds. But once they matured? Wow, those were the loyal, loving boys you wanted to marry.

But now those same kinds of boys are not getting that far. While they are in their awkward stage, struggling to fit in, they are told that they aren’t men at all—that they would be better off if they were women. And the crazy thing is, in the short term that seems to be true. While some will damage their body beyond repair, most will find a group and find friends cheering them on to be girls in a way they never experienced when they were just the nerdy, socially awkward boys.

And that is why, in the middle of 2023, a group of highly educated parents, along with health experts, professional educators and others, joined together to develop a website dedicated to the problems of boys suffering from gender distress. We wanted the world to see the ROGD boys for what they really are (as one of our members said): small, wounded animals just looking for a place to fit in.

Please visit our website: http://rogdboys.org